Ministry dubs first COVID-19 vaccination drive for children 5-11 years successful

The Health Ministry through the government continues to put measures in place to ensure citizens have adequate access to vaccination, with the latest being the roll-out of the first pediatric vaccination programme for children 5-11 years old.

Hosted on Saturday, the exercise, saw 153 children taking the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony revealed this during Monday’s COVID-19 update.

“I think we had a very good exercise we were able to vaccinate 153 children between the ages of five and 11,” Dr. Anthony said. He continued, “We also did other vaccination because the parents who accompany the children, some of them got booster doses, and so we did another 51 doses in addition to the specific age group of 5-11.” 

Dr. Anthony pointed out that his ministry is collaborating with the Education Ministry to roll- out vaccination in other regions across the country. “The Education Ministry would have sent out consent forms to the parents and they have been able to collect a lot of those responses, so the schools where we have higher percentage of response that is positive, we are going to go into those schools and start vaccination,” the minister disclosed.

It was revealed that this week, the ministries will be taking teams to Regions Two, Three, Five and Six to vaccinate children within the 5-11 age cohort. Minister Anthony revealed that vaccines have already been allocated to the regions, and health care workers trained to properly administer them.

It was noted by the ministry that apart from the 5-11 age group, they have begun administering booster doses to the adolescents (12 -17 years) population. “We have started that from the first of this month, we’re getting a few people who are coming in and we are hopeful that we can get more persons coming to get the booster,” the minister said.

Dr. Anthony revealed that even as the World Health Organisation (WHO) continues to report outbreaks of respiratory illness in a number of countries across the world, persons are learning to adapt to COVID-19 and return to some level of normalcy.

The health minister continues to appeal to citizens to abide by the COVID-19 guidelines of wearing masks, getting vaccinated, observing social distancing and ensuring indoor spaces are properly ventilated.

Dr. Anthony admitted that the significant rise in COVID-19 cases is suspected to be as a result of the BA.2 variant. He noted that this variant is highly transmissible and can cause reinfections. Dr. Anthony added that the ministry will continue monitoring cases.