Pfizer second doses rolling out in schools this week; 600 children vaccinated on Saturday

The second doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines are being administered to children older than 12 years, and the rollout of the vaccines continues in schools where the first dose was distributed.

On Thursday, the first set of children were able to receive their vaccines at the St. Stanislaus College at Brickdam, Georgetown. This is so because the rollout of the vaccines started there in August, days after Guyana received the donation of the vaccines from the United States.

The second dose of the Pfizer vaccine is given 21 days after the first has been administered, and now this rollout has commenced at schools across Georgetown. In the coming days, it will expand to other areas and regions.

At the weekend, too, another COVID-19 vaccination drive-thru was held at the MovieTowne Mall at Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown.

This was a follow-up to the massive children’s vaccination drive-thru held at the same location on August 29 and it was anticipated that the children who received their first dose then would have been able to get their second dose.

There, however, only about 600 doses (including first and second doses) of the Pfizer vaccines were administered.

“It’s a shortfall from what we were anticipating…” Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony said during his daily COVID-19 update on Monday.

Last week, Public health nurse Iona Barker-Wickham told the News Room that it is important for children to get their second dose of the vaccines “to back you up so that your immunity would be at a certain level where you can fight off diseases.”

Despite the lower-than-anticipated turnout at the MovieTowne drive-thru, the health minister reminded members of the public that children can get their second dose of the Pfizer vaccines at various schools, as the vaccination rollout widens in the coming days and weeks.

Meanwhile, as of Sunday, some 346,529 adults (or 67.6 per cent of the targeted adult population) received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine; some 179,115 adults (or 34.9 per cent of the population) received both first and second doses.

Overall, some 20,136 children (or 28.3 per cent of children older than 12 years) have received at least one dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines.