‘Show up, roll up sleeves for second jab’ – Minister Anthony

THE GUYANESE GOVERNMENT IS APPEALING TO ITS CITIZENS to take their
second jab of the COVID-19 inoculant to strengthen protection against the highly contagious and
deadly virus which have so far killed 4.9 million persons worldwide including 897 Guyanese.
Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony is concerned that many who have taken the first dose of the
vaccine are not showing up to roll up their sleeves for the additional jab.
Guyana has sufficient jabs for everyone in the country, Anthony reiterated, but citizens are
ignoring the health ministry’s ongoing campaign to ensure Guyanese are fully immunised so the
South American Republic can achieve herd immunity.
The country’s vaccine drive was initially stalled by a highly level of hesitancy in the population.
Voting with their feet about taking the second shot is a further challenge facing Anthony and the
ministry of health staff.
“We still have a number of persons who should come forward to get their first dose vaccines,
and in every region we’re still not at that 80 percent, except for Region Four, where we are at 82
percent. All other regions are below 80 percent, and therefore there is still a lot of room for
persons to come forward and get one of the covid 19 vaccines,” he said.
. “What we are seeing is that persons have received their first dose vaccine but they are not
coming back for their second dose, and we want to encourage those persons who have received a
first dose to come forward and get their second dose as quickly as possible,” he appealed.
At the moment, the ministry has currently stopped administering the first dose of the
AstraZeneca vaccine, but there are adequate amounts of the second doses for those who already
took the first shot, Anthony said.

He said there are also adequate first and second doses of Sinopharm and Sputnik V, with another
shipment offloaded here last week. There are also adequate doses of the Single dose J&J vaccine
the minister assured.
“A week ago, the FDA has recommended that after 52 days you will have to get a booster shot so
right now, we are examining the possibility of that but as of now the J&J will remain a single
dose,” Minister Anthony explained.
He continued, “We have vaccines that are available and we want to make sure that people come
and get vaccinated, because if they don’t, then we are going to have unvaccinated persons
predominantly (contracting) covid (and) ending up in the hospital. Some of them are dying
because they have not been vaccinated,” Anthony lamented.
“For the children we initially saw a rapid uptake of the vaccines and these are the Pfizer
vaccines. However, I think over the last week we have started to see a slowing-off, where not as
many children are coming forward to get vaccinated. We need this to go up back because, if
children are not properly vaccinated, it is going to take a long time for us to return safely to
school and therefore I would urge that parents take their children to get vaccinated,” the health
minister counselled.
“We just have to keep encouraging. I know that there is a lot of nonsense that people read on the
internet, and because of that, they become hesitant and we have some persons locally, as well
who have been sharing a lot of misinformation. I think people have to be a little bit more
discerning, and they have to be smart and think about what it is that’s going to protect their
health, and certainly from all the scientific evidence, these vaccines are the things that are going
to protect you,” Anthony emphasised.
Dr Anthony said Guyana is looking towards the finish line when it comes to vaccination.
“We need that final push to get the numbers up so we could get closer to herd immunity,” he
said.

Currently 73.6 percent of the adult population has been vaccinated with the first dose of a
Covid-19 vaccine while 46.4 percent has had their second dose, Minister Anthony said.