Region Four leading second dose vaccination coverage- Health Minister

In his daily COVID-19 update on Thursday, Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony reported that Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) is currently leading the pack as it relates to the second doses of COVID-19 vaccines.

According to Dr. Anthony, the Region’s second dose numbers stand at 32.7 per cent.

“And that is the highest for second doses currently,” he commented.

Trailing behind with the second dose numbers is Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice). On a more positive note, the Minister disclosed that Region One (Barima-Wani) is currently leading first dose coverage with 67.4 percent of the population vaccinated.

“We have vaccines that are available to everyone.”

“We have enough AstraZeneca for first and second doses that have been dispatched to every Region and the same goes for the Sinopharm vaccine. We have first dose Sputnik V and we are awaiting second doses,” Dr. Anthony said.

In this regard, he posited that Guyanese have “no excuse” not to get vaccinated as there is not a shortage of vaccines.

As of Wednesday, 52.9 percent of Guyana’s adult population received first doses of either the Astra Zeneca, Sinopharm or Sputnik V vaccines. This equates to 257,384 persons.

Currently, Guyana’s total second dose number stands at 29.3 percent, which means that a total of 142,691 persons are considered fully-vaccinated.

As the push for vaccination continues, the Health Minister said that the government is working to digitalise the vaccination records, with help from India.

India uses Co-WIN, a COVID-19 vaccination app, and that could soon be adopted by Guyana, which would facilitate the country’s tracking efforts in real-time and also allow health officials to understand trends and patterns.

Co-WIN, a medical database software, has been helping India track the rollout of its massive vaccination programme. It works by aggregating the vaccination tallies from each of the vaccination sites.

The Health Minister had said that this software has been working well in India, ably helping that country to readily tally its vaccination numbers.

And, he noted that the Government of India has offered this software to Guyana and a number of other countries.

According to the Economic Times in India, countries such as Canada, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Nigeria, Uganda, Vietnam, Iraq, Dominican Republic, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are interested in knowing about the Co-WIN platform for implementing it in their own countries to run their own COVID programmes.