With the threat of the Omicron variant and the reopening of schools, authorities are considering offering booster doses to some categories of children to increase their immunity against the novel coronavirus.
Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony, during his Covid-19 update today, explained that the United States of America is considering administering the booster doses to children aged 16 and 17.
As such, local health authorities are considering doing the same here.
“In the US now, they have considered persons 16 years and older can get the booster dose so, that’s something under active consideration here in Guyana,” he explained.
Moreover, the Health Minister said authorities are closely monitoring the children population.
“We are doing monitoring. We have seen in other countries children who are vaccinated would get a milder form of the disease if they do contract the virus, in a lot of cases they remain asymptomatic, so we’ll continue to monitor.”
Meanwhile, the Minister explained that the Covid vaccination numbers remain “relatively stable.”
As such, he is urging persons who have not yet taken the jabs, to do so now.
To date, 411,269 or 80.2% of adults have received a first dose of a Covid vaccine while 295,696 or 57.6 per cent have received their second dose of Covid vaccine.
In terms of booster doses, 11,986 shots have been administered.
For children 12 to 17, 30,410 or 41.7 per cent have received a first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, while 21,740 or 29.8 per cent are fully immunized.
