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Donation of 80,000 vaccines from Indian Govt. expected to arrive next week
Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, receiving vaccine donation from Barbados recently.
Kaieteur News – Guyana is set to receive another donation of COVID-19 vaccines, this time from the Government of India which is expected to arrive next week.
It was announced by the Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony during yesterday’s COVID-19 update that the donation will see some 80,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine arriving in Guyana, which will further bolster the immunization campaign that has already initiated.
According to the Health Minister, the Indian Government has pledged 500,000 doses of the vaccine to the Caribbean Region and luckily, Guyana has accounted for 16 per cent. “In that allocation, Guyana is going to get 80,000 doses and those doses we are expecting would come into Guyana sometime next week,” Anthony disclosed, adding that “We are now working on the exact date and time when those vaccines are going to arrive.”
Earlier this month Barbados donated 3,000 doses of its Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines to Guyana out of its total of 100,000 doses given by the Indian Government. From Barbados’ donation, the government kick started the immunization campaign, working towards the goal of achieving herd immunity which requires at least 80 per cent of the population being vaccinated.
Since the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is a double dose vaccine, of the 3,000 doses donated; 200 doses were allocated to workers at the CARICOM Headquarters and the remaining 2,800 doses were given to frontline health workers as they are on top of the government’s priority list for immunization.
Further, the Health Ministry announced earlier this week that the COVID -19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility has initiated its global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, meaning that Guyana is set to receive its quota soon. It was previously reported that approximately 104,000 doses of vaccines would be acquired through COVAX, free of cost.
However, Dr. Anthony stated that he cannot definitively state when the vaccines will arrive in Guyana. Anthony said, “With COVAX, we haven’t really seen that rapid deployment of vaccines. We are hoping that by sometime next week, we would start seeing vaccines coming to the region and hopefully shortly thereafter, we would be able to get adequate doses as was promised through the mechanism.”
The Government will also purchase 149,000 vaccine doses through the CARICOM/ African Union agreement and a donation of 20,000 doses of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine from the Chinese Government is also expected.
Additionally, the government remains in discussion with the Russian Government for a quota of their Sputnik COVID-19 vaccines and even moved to issue emergency approval for that vaccine and the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine through the Government Analyst Food and Drug Department earlier this week.
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