The Guyana Government is now recommending the mixing and matching of Covid-19 vaccines, with Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony saying that this is more effective.
Since the beginning of the its immunisation campaign in February this year, local authorities were ensuring that persons who are fully vaccinated received a first and second dose of the same vaccine.
In August, Health Advisor Dr Leslie Ramsammy had noted that discussions on the possibility of administering mixed vaccines were ongoing.
During the Covid-19 update today, the Health Minister revealed that vaccine mixing is a good strategy that is becoming more acceptable worldwide.
“It allows for programmatic flexibility. There are some countries who get one vaccine for a period and they use that out and then they get another vaccine so mixing and matching allows for that flexibility…that’s one of the reasons why the WHO has now agreed that you can mix vaccines,” Dr Anthony explained.
“Another reason would be preferences of people, it also allows for individual flexibility…if someone took a first dose of one vaccine and they had some kind of reaction, reaction meaning some people might experience a pain…fever…headache…,so on the second dose, they’d prefer not to get that one, so it allows some flexibility in using another one,” he added.
Moreover, the Health Minister explained that “scientifically it has been shown of you mix and match the vaccine, you can get better efficacy and that really is the driving reason for people to mix and match.”
According to Dr Anthony, there are some 20 studies which have verified that if you mix and match vaccines, you get better outcomes.
“It is a good strategy and now most of the countries are now suggesting that you can mix and match. It’s becoming more acceptable,” he expressed.
Guyana has been using vaccines manufactured by Sputnik V, Sinopharm, AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson to immunise its population.
To date, 405,043 adults or 79% of that population have received a first dose while 284,870 persons or 55.5% are fully immunised.
For children, 29,601 or 40.6% have received a first dose while 20,849 or 28.6% are fully inoculated.
A total of 4,448 booster doses have been administered to date.
Regions Two, Eight and Ten continue to lag behind in terms of first dose administration.
