Dr. Anthony – Health workers to be trained for vaccination of children 5 to11 years old

As the World Health Organisation (WHO) approving the reformulation of the US-made Pfizer
vaccine for children five to 11 years old, Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, disclosed that the
ministry will be training healthcare workers to administer the vaccine to this population.
Dr. Anthony pointed out that as soon as Guyana receives vaccines for the age cohort, training
will be provided to healthcare workers “to make sure they understand the dosing, the mixing and
finally how to administer it and then post vaccination, how to observe.” The health minister
during his daily COVID-19 update on Monday, revealed that countries will now be more
confident in administering the COVID-19 vaccine to the younger age group.
“It’s good that we’re now seeing that the WHO has decided to go this route. What this would
allow is for countries who are interested in giving this vaccine to the children within this age
group 11 to 5, will now be able to do it with more confidence,” Dr. Anthony said. Dr. Anthony
said that in an effort to provide adequate vaccines to low- and middle-income countries, the
WHO and the Pfizer Inc. have developed labs to enable the manufacturing of the Pfizer vaccine
in other parts of the World.
“The WHO along with Pfizer company would have developed and sent a mini lab to the African
Union in this particular instance to South Africa, where they would now be able to manufacture
the Pfizer vaccine in South Africa…,” Minister Anthony said. He added, “I think similar
initiatives are on the way in other areas of the world and so we’ll see more capacity being built to
be able to manufacture these vaccines over the next year or so.”
Meanwhile, the minister disclosed that as of Tuesday, 423, 024 or 84.2 per cent of the adult
population took the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine while 327, 775 or 63.9 percent is now
fully vaccinated. He added that in terms of the 12 to 17 age group, 33, 529 or 46 percent took the
first dose of the Pfizer vaccine and 24, 202 or 33.2 percent took both doses.