COVID-19 vaccine for children 5 to 11 years available from June 11

Jun 07, 2022 News

Kaieteur News – Children between five to 11 years will now be able to get vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus, with Guyana receiving 52,800 doses of Pfizer vaccine from the Government of Spain on Monday.

(From left) Ambassador of Spain, Fernando Nolgales Alvarez handing over the shipment of vaccines to Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony who was joined by Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand. (Photo credit: DPI)

The vaccines which arrived at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport would see some 26,400 children across the country being inoculated. Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony at one of his recent COVID-19 updates had stated that “these are special formulation, these are not the regular vaccines that we have been giving, this is a special vaccine made by Pfizer especially for this age category.” Children in this age cohort are set to be administered 1/3 of an adult dose.
The minister in a press briefing following the arrival of the vaccines said that it is important to get children vaccinated because it will reduce their chances of becoming severely sick. He shared that out of the 65,000 cases recorded in the country, children account for one third of that.
The minister announced that from this Saturday, they will be starting the rollout of the vaccine at the National Culture Centre tarmac. Importantly, parental consent will be needed. Following this exercise, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, the vaccine will be then rolled to other parts of the country.
In the fight against COVID-19, Guyana was able to source a number of vaccines for persons 12 years and older. Already booster shots are made available for persons 18 years and older and persons 12 to 17 years who are being administered the Pfizer vaccine.
Meanwhile, via its daily COVID-19 update on Monday, the Ministry via its dashboard reported that within the last 24 hours, they have recorded 22 new cases across the country. The new infections now bring the total number of confirmed cases to 65,294. According to the dashboard, two patients are in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU), 30 persons are in institutional isolation, 881 are in home isolation and two are in institutional quarantine. To date, a total of 63,143 persons have recovered from the virus.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News