‘Very poor’ uptake of booster shots – Health Minister

Only about 36,866 adults have taken their COVID-19 booster shots and Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony says this signals the poor uptake of booster shots among the adult population.

Overall, 422,165 adults (or 82.3 per cent of the targeted adult population) have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine while 310,938 adult (or 60.6 per cent of the targeted population) have received their first and second doses.

Though the Health Ministry announced that all adults are eligible for booster shots since the beginning of December last year, the uptake of these booster shots has been slow.

And when asked about people’s response to the call for increased uptake of these booster shots on Thursday during his COVID-19 update, Dr. Anthony said that people have been responding “very poorly.”

He also provided a breakdown of the regional booster shot uptake. This is as follows:

Region One- 664 booster doses

Region Two- 1,552 doses

Region Three- 5,354 doses

Region Four – 18,829 doses

Region Five- 2,191 doses

Region Six- 6,295 doses

Region Seven- 338 doses

Region Eight- 221 doses

Region Nine- 1,074 doses

Region 10- 348 doses

Dr. Anthony explained that it is important for more people to take their booster shots to protect themselves from the highly transmissible Omicron variant. Already, health authorities suspect that this new variant has contributed significantly to the surge in infections locally.

During this month so far, almost 19,000 people have been infected with the novel coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19. Importantly, too, there have been 99 COVID-19 deaths this month.