Avellon Williams
GEORGETOWN, GUYANA – The Guyana government says it will begin vaccinating children ages 5 to 11 years next week, once official approval is given by the United States Food and Drugs Administration (FDA).
Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony said, “Starting from next week, we are examining the possibility of doing the vaccination of the 5 to 11 age group because we are anticipating that the US FDA would approve the Pfizer vaccine for this age group as well, so we will have another cohort of people that we will have to work on.”
The Guyana Government currently has been administering the vaccines to children from the specific age group of 12-18 years, including pregnant women, and nursing women.
Dr. Anthony also noted the disparity in children from 12-18 years of age had been fully vaccinated in the majority, but he urged the local health officials to increase the number of children who are still left with the first dose pending; with the current fully vaccinated rate of 17,498 or 24 per cent of the adolescent population. “
Our approach has been that once we go to a school, open it up to the entire community so anybody within that age group can come to the school that we are operating in and they can get vaccinated. We have seen some of that but in other cases, I think people felt that only people going to that school can come and I think that has caused some confusion so we are working with the ministry of education to correct that so that we can appeal to more people,”
Dr. Anthony noted that they would be working with the Ministry of Education and continue going to the different schools on the island to carefully check whether all students within that age group are vaccinated. The officials would also advise the responsible parents to get their children fully vaccinated against the infectious COVID-19 virus.
