Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony on Monday stated that parents are reluctant to have their children vaccinated even if they want to, and this poses a challenge for the Ministry of Health.
He made this statement at the opening ceremony of a COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy workshop that was held in collaboration with UNICEF at the Regency Suites Hotel in Georgetown. The aim of the initiative is to specifically focus on encouraging persons to promote the COVID vaccination campaign.
Dr Anthony told the gathering that the vaccination effort in the 12-17 age cohort faces a major challenge as parents are not granting or permitting their children to take the vaccines.
“Now one of the big challenges that we’re having with this particular group is that even if the older children are interested in getting their vaccines, we’re not able to administer that vaccine because we require parental permission and if the parents do not give that permission, then we would not administer the vaccine. And we’ve been talking about this repeatedly, we’ve been trying to reach out to parents, trying to talk to people about the importance of this,” Dr Anthony said.
He stated that though he believes there is a lot of complacencies in persons surrounding the COVID vaccinations, there is room for improvement.
“I think a lot of people feel that, by their behaviour, that the COVID-19 pandemic is over, so we need to throw caution to the wind. Now we don’t have to wear masks, we don’t have to take all the precautions because that’s not so important. But that’s not the case, because we’re still having persons who when we test them are coming back positive and we still have persons coming into the hospital,” he disclosed.
Anthony also disclosed that those hospitalised are the ones who are unvaccinated.
The COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy workshop will be conducted over the next three days, providing information on the importance of getting vaccinated against COVID-19, and clearing any misconceptions that persons may have about the COVID-19 vaccines.
“The reason for us being here this morning is to strengthen that conversation, to ask you our participants to be the faces who will take the step towards encouraging those who are not yet vaccinated to be vaccinated, to give you the information so that you’re in a better position to speak to some who might be your family members, your neighbours, your friends because the fight against COVID-19 is not yet completed. We still have a long way to go,” Director of Primary Healthcare, Dr Ertenisa Hamilton had said.
Currently, 423,024 or 84.2 per cent of the adult population have received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 327,775 or 63.9 per cent have received a second dose. For Children 12 to 17, 33,529 or 46 per cent have received a first dose of the Pfizer vaccine while 24,202 or 33.2 per cent have received both doses.
For booster doses, 50,373 persons have received their jabs, which is just below 10 per cent of the adult population.
