Booster shots being offered five months after second dose in Guyana

Health Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, has stressed that the effectiveness of the COVID-
19 vaccines reduces six months after taking the second dose, and based on this finding, he said
the ministry will now be administering booster shots five months after the second dose.
“Booster shots are now widely recommended because what we noticed is that six months after
the first two doses, the immunity of the person starts to wane, meaning that the anti-bodies that
they’ve manufactured would start getting lower and by six months it is so low that it’s not very
effective,” Dr Anthony rexplained.

He continued, “However, what they have found is that, if between five to six months you’re
given a third dose which is the booster shot, then the immunity remains quite high. We are
offering that booster shot now at five months so that before the immunity starts dropping that
we’re able to give people the booster dose at that appropriate time so that immunity remains
fairly constant, and fairly high.”
The health minister noted further that some persons would develop diabetes after an infection.
This, he advised, is due to the toll the disease takes on the endocrine system. “One of the things
that we knew with COVID is that even if you were pre-disposed to diabetes, you had risk factors
for diabetes then in some instances after an infection, people actually then present with diabetes
because again COVID can affect many systems in your body and in this case the endocrine
system,” he explained
Dr. Anthony noted further that these illnesses developed after an infection are mainly cause by
the Delta variant as it is the more severe form of the disease. He declared that the Omicron
variant predominantly affects the upper respiratory tract, resulting in less hospitalisation.