Unvaccinated teachers urged to get inoculated by Health Minister

Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony disclosed that several teachers in the public school system
have still not yet been immunised against COVID-19. He issued a passionate appeal for them to
take the shots.
He noted that by taking both doses of the vaccine, as well as booster shots, teachers will help to
keep the school environment safe. “I think there is still a number of teachers who are
unvaccinated, so, if we want to have a very safe school environment, then I think we should
encourage those teachers to get vaccinated, because without being vaccinated, they are putting
themselves, obviously at risk for infection and not just in school, but generally in the
community,” the minister explained during his daily update on Monday.
Minister Anthony said the health ministry has not asked that any school be closed, as it is the
mandate of the Education Ministry to ensure children attending sessions are in a safe
environment. Meanwhile, the ministry is still seeking to increase the vaccination rate among
persons within the 12-17 age category. He said that vaccination among adolescents currently
stands at 42.6 percent. “For these children we need them to get not just a first dose, but second
dose and there is also that possibility of some of them also getting a booster dose, so there is a lot
of work to be done with this age group to make sure that they are fully vaccinated,” the minister
said.
Dr. Anthony stressed that parents and teachers need to encourage children to get vaccinated. “We
are willing as a ministry, if we have special requests from schools, to be able to go to that school
and conduct such vaccination exercise and also if we are going to do that, the teachers and the
school’s administration would have to help us to make sure that we get parental
consent,” Minister Anthony said.

The health minister pointed out that the Delta and Omicron variants of the Covid-19 disease are
not the same.  He said with the Delta variant, persons get a more severe form of the disease
which may cause death or require hospitalisation due to the effects on the lungs and subsequent
multiorgan disfunction. The Omicron, he said, is different. “Generally, we see persons who are
infected would have the disease more in the nose, in their throat, so it behaves more like an upper
respiratory tract infection, however there are some people who would have comorbidities, who
certainly would become hospitalised because of its contagiousness, it is certainly, by our
numbers affecting more people, and since more people are affected, you would have, relative to
that, hospitalisation,” the minister disclosed.
He continued, “So far, our numbers are pretty ok, because when you look at, say almost 6,000
infections over the last couple of days, correspondingly of these 6,000 persons, very few of them
required hospitalisation,” Minister Anthony said that the Covid-19 facility at Ocean View has 51
persons, which is a low ratio compared to those infected.
Meanwhile, he noted that health authorities are still trying to source the special vials
manufactured by Pfizer for children 5-11 years. “The team here, we actually believe that we can
dilute it appropriately but Pfizer has made a special vial with the same vaccine but in different

proportions, so we are now trying to source that, that generally is only available in the United
States and there is some difficulty trying to get it for other countries but, nevertheless we are
working to see if we can do that,” he revealed.
The minister disclosed that an arrangement is being pursued with Caricom to see whether the
vials could be acquired in bulk so Guyana could easily benefit. He said that the difficulty has
arisen because of the demand by other countries.