Min Anthony assures that there’s adequate COVID-19 vaccines available

Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony has declared that Guyana is not experiencing any shortage
of COVID-19 vaccines to continue government’s immunisation exercise in addressing the spread
of the deadly disease.
Dr. Anthony made this disclosure during the daily Covid update on Tuesday. He said that
government has adequate Covid vaccines to fully immunise its citizens, as vaccines were
procured from various sources.
He explained that the country “would normally get vaccines through COVAX because Guyana is
one of the COVAX AMC (Advance Market Commitment) countries and we have benefitted
from those donations”.
Minister Anthony continued, “Bilaterally, we have also received vaccine donations from the US,
Spain and some other countries who have given us vaccines, plus we went out and buy vaccines
and, in this case, we have been able to purchase Sinopharm and Sputnik vaccines.”
The health minister disclosed that Government has been offered additional vaccines by other
countries. “More recently, we have had a lot of countries offering to donate vaccines to us, but
they had short expiry dates… we did not accept those donations because we had adequate
supplies,” Minister Anthony explained.
Dr. Anthony revealed that in January 2021, Guyana received its first batch of
AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines via the partnership between Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness
Innovations (CEPI) the Vaccine Alliance, the Pan American Health Organisation/World Health
Organisation (PAHO/WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).