Vaccine cards equipment for digitisation to arrive by first quarter

Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, disclosed that the ministry is expecting the delivery of some
special equipment by the end of the first quarter of this year, to begin the process of digitising
COVID-19 vaccination cards.
Dr. Anthony made the disclosure during Thursday’s COVID-19 update. “Since last year we have
been working with UNDP [United Nations Development Programme] to buy some of the
equipment that is necessary, the computers, the specialised printers and so forth, so we expect
that we will get delivery of those special equipment to print the new cards within the first quarter
of this year,” Dr. Anthony said.
The minister noted that most of the physical registers have already been procured from across the
country and a team has begun working on transforming them into the digital format. “We have a
special team within the ministry that is working on the digitisation. We have got most of the
physical registers, and we are now putting that in a digital format. A lot of the work has already
been completed,” Minister Anthony explained.
The health minister said that the initiative will allow easier access to information about a
person’s vaccination status and also address the concern of illegal purchases of vaccination
cards.
Meanwhile, he said that persons continue to recognise the importance of the COVID-19 vaccines
as the ministry recorded its highest number of vaccinations per day, with over 3,000 persons
taking the jab on Wednesday. “So, yesterday I think we broke a record in terms of vaccination,
we were able to administer 3, 706 vaccines and that then gradually increased some of our
totals,” he disclosed.
Dr. Anthony said that in terms of booster doses, 22, 747 doses have been administered. Of this
number 16, 291 persons received the Pfizer vaccine, 4, 564 persons received the Johnson &
Johnson vaccine while 1, 892 persons took Sinopharm as their booster dose.