No shortage of AstraZeneca, Sinopharm vaccines -Minister Anthony

Minister of Health, Hon. Dr. Frank Anthony says there is no shortage of second doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Sinopharm vaccines.

During his daily COVID-19 update on Monday, Dr. Anthony said preparations were made to ensure that persons would receive their first and second doses of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine.

“As I’ve said in the past and I continue to say, the AstraZeneca vaccine, what you get for first dose is the same vaccine you get as your second dose. And because we know this, when we received AstraZeneca vaccines, we kept half of it as the second dose.

So, every person who would have received AstraZeneca vaccine. We have your equivalent second dose in storage.”

The same measures were put in place for the Sinopharm vaccine.

“As you know, we initially had about 20,000 doses of Sinopharm and the Sinopharm vaccines are similar – what you get for your first dose is the same vaccine you will get on your second dose.

Now, we have given out most of the Sinopharm first dose and what we want now is for people to come and get their second dose,” he said.

Minister Anthony again appealed to the public to take their second doses of vaccine.

“We haven’t had any case of anybody getting the infection. We haven’t had any case of persons who were fully vaccinated coming into the hospital.

We have had no case, someone who’s been fully vaccinated getting into the ICU nor have we had any case of someone who has been fully vaccinated dying from COVID. So, if you got your first dose, we’re really pleading with people, come and get your second dose.

To date, 198,956 persons or 40.9 per cent of the country’s adult population have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine while 68,333 persons or 14 per cent, have received their second doses.

Guyana is expected to receive a shipment of the Sputnik V vaccine during this week and another consignment of vaccines from COVAX is due the second week in June.

Additionally, the Government continues to procure vaccines as the country looks to achieve herd immunity.

Minister Anthony says Guyana is also set to receive some 150,000 doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine through a partnership with CARICOM and the African Union.

“The African Union is making 1.5 million doses of vaccines available to the Caribbean and Guyana is going to get approximately 150,000 doses.

Last week we made a down payment on those doses so, we are hopeful that during June we will be able to get those vaccines.”

To date, Guyana has also received quantities of vaccines from Barbados, India and China.