With a November month-end expiry date for the current batch of AstraZeneca vaccines in Guyana, Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony is urging persons who are due for their second shot to ensure they get their jabs within this timeline.
The AstraZeneca vaccines available in the country are currently only being used as second doses to fully immunise those persons who have already received their first shot.
“We are appealing to people to come and get vaccinated…We still have a few more days to ensure that people come and get their second dose,” the Health Minister explained.
“The challenge that we have is that you have a number of persons who got first dose AstraZeneca and we currently have second dose available to them, if they don’t come by the end of November, if these vaccines then expire, then we won’t have any in stock, we’ll have to wait until we get another shipment or we’ll have purchase another shipment and that would be a pity,” Dr Anthony added.
Earlier this week, the Health Minister had revealed that since the country started its immunisation campaign, no vaccines had to be thrown out due to them being expired.
To date, over 139,000 persons in the country have taken a first dose vaccine and are due for their second shots.
So far, 380,257 adults have received their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine which represents 74.1 per cent of the adult population while 241,211 or 47 per cent are fully vaccinated.
For children within the ages of 12 to 17, a total of 27,193 or 37.3 per cent have received a first dose of the Pfizer vaccines while 17,868 or 24.5 per cent of that age cohort have received both doses.
