VACCINE HESITANCY

Jul 06, 2021 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – Vaccine hesitancy (VH) is extremely high. A good way of assessing VH is to examine the number of persons receiving their first dose of the vaccines. Guyana started its vaccination programme in the second week of February and initially this was mainly for frontline staff since only a limited number of vaccines were lent to Guyana by Barbados. February therefore is not a good month in which to start any assessment of VH since vaccines were not readily available and were being rolled out to a limited subset of the population.
The early stages of vaccination tend to have a slow rollout since the authorities have to be cautions and tweak systems. As such, the first month tends to be very slow but from the second month onward, the rate is supposed to pick up. The table below shows the total number of first doses given to persons for the months of April, May and June 2021.

Total First Doses of vaccines: April-June 2021
Month Total first doses administered Percentage change
April 98,286 –
May 69,000 (29.80%)
June 33,134 (52.00%)

As the table illustrates, the monthly vaccinate rates (as per first doses) have been falling dramatically. There was almost a one-third decline in administered doses in May as compared with April. And the vaccination rate halved in June when compared to May.
The statistics reflect failure of the Ministry of Health to meet its vaccination targets. When the government was planning its campaign, it projected being able to administer 7,500 vaccines per day. This would have allowed it to vaccinate 150,000 persons per month. The government has fallen far short of this target, only able to achieve about two-thirds of this in April.
It was then announced that the government was stepping-up its vaccination campaign. The President himself took to the airwaves to urge persons to get vaccinated. On the 24th March, he announced that the government was looking to vaccinate some 10,000 persons per day.
At the time, a total of 25,000 persons had been vaccinated and the government had then decided to open up vaccination to those persons 40+ years. Three weeks later, it opened vaccination to all persons above the age of 18 years – meaning the largest adult cohort of the population could then be vaccinated. Despite this, the 10,000 per day target was not met.
The government has resorted to framing its vaccination numbers differently. It now reports on the percentage of the adult population, which has been vaccinated. It now says that 48 percent of the adult population or 234,255 persons have been vaccinated. But this is less than 30 percent of the total population.
The government’s vaccination campaign has hit a big hurdle. That hurdle is called vaccination hesitancy (VH). But Guyana can take comfort that it is not alone in this regard. The United States of America – one of the worst hit countries and the one which does not have a shortage of vaccines – also has a serious VH problem. This is evident from the rate of daily vaccines administered. Four months into its vaccination campaign, the number of doses administered (as at 14th April) was 3.3 million. But this dropped last week to as low as 764,000 doses per day. And this is responsible for the slow climb of the number of persons vaccinated.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States reported high vaccine hesitancy among young persons. For example, even though all persons, age 16 years and older, were eligible for vaccines since mid-April, only 34 percent of those aged 18-39 years were vaccinated as at the end of May.
The CDC study found that “adults aged 18–24 years were least likely to report having received a COVID-19 vaccine and were most likely to report being unsure about getting vaccinated or that they were probably going to get vaccinated.” Despite reports of younger persons becoming sick, vaccine hesitancy among young persons was high.
The UK has also found that vaccine hesitancy is higher among young persons. In some respects, this is understandable but not acceptable. Many young persons are of the view that they are not at high risk of dying from the disease since the majority of deaths have been the elderly.
However, they miss the larger picture which is unless as many persons as possible get vaccinated, the pandemic will be around and will take lives. And since many of these young persons also live with elderly parents and grandparents, there is a high risk of them infecting them.
There is nothing more that the government of Guyana can do to reduce vaccine hesitancy. Guyanese prefer to learn the hard way. And so, the better option for the government is to forget all the COVID-19 infomercials. If persons have not gotten the message by now after more than 469 deaths, they never will.
The better option would be to target the most vulnerable. Get all those over 55 years old vaccinated, and save lives!

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)