BROOKLYN, NY– The Guyana government says it will begin vaccinating children ages five to 11 next week once approval is given by the United States Food and Drugs Administration (FDA).
“Starting from next week, we are examining the possibility of doing the vaccination of the five 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,” said Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony.
US media reports noted that Pfizer’s request to roll out COVID-19 vaccines for Americans as young as five years old cleared a key regulatory hurdle Tuesday after a panel of the Food and Drug Administration’s outside vaccine advisers voted by a majority to back Pfizer’s request.
Guyana is currently administering the vaccine to children 12 to 18 years and pregnant and nursing women.
Earlier this week, the health minister noted the disparity in children 12-18 years taking the second dose of the vaccine and also stated that there needs to be more uptake of the first dose of the vaccine, with the current fully vaccinated rate of 17,498 or 24 percent 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 said.
The health minister said the ministry would continue going into schools and working with the education ministry to ensure children of that age group are vaccinated and advising parents to ensure their children are immunized so that they could return to school.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health reported that two women, aged 62 and 60 years old, have died from the coronavirus (COVID-19).
It said that the vaccination status of the 62-year-old woman was unknown, while the 60-year-old woman was not vaccinated.
As a result, the country’s death toll for October has increased to 100, while a total of 899 deaths have been recorded since March 11 last year.
The authorities said 66 new infections had been recorded over 24 hours and that the number of diseases recorded here is 35,170.
Additionally, there are 23 patients receiving treatment in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU), 76 individuals in institutional isolation, 3,239 people in home isolation, and four people in institutional quarantine. A total of 30,933 people have recovered from the virus.
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