Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony today encouraged all those who are eligible to take the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines to do so urgently, as the jabs are slated to expire in November and December.
A total of 146,250 doses of the Pfizer vaccines arrived in Guyana on August 24 and these were initially being used to administer to the country’s adolescent population.
Only recently, authorities began offering the shots to pregnant and breastfeeding women.
When asked today about the expiry of those vaccines, the Health Minister explained that “the dates that we have, I think some of those vaccines would go off in November and some would go off in December.”
To date, 25,510 children aged 12 to 17 have received a first shot of the vaccine while 14,367 are fully immunised.
With the vaccines now being extended to pregnant and breastfeeding women, Dr Anthony explained that partnerships have been established with private hospitals.
“We have spoken to a number of the private hospitals and we have done training for the nurses at these private hospitals and we are going to give them the Pfizer vaccines as well for them to administer to their patients in the private setting ,” the Minister explained.
While pregnant and breastfeeding women were initially exempted from taking the vaccines, this is no longer the case, according to the Health Minister.
Guyana is expected to receive 100,000 more doses of the Pfizer vaccines tomorrow, through the COVAX mechanism.
Meanwhile, a total of 365,274 adults have received a Covid-19 vaccine, representing 71.2% of the adult population whereas 218,120 or 42.5% are fully inoculated.
