Health Minister encourages elderly to take booster shots

A total of 72, 410 persons have received their COVID-19 booster shots, but Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony says the more vulnerable persons are slow in coming forward to take the jab.

During his daily COVID-19 update, the minister said that persons above the age of 60 and who might have comorbidities and underlying illnesses are not up taking their booster vaccines.

“I think there is a lot of work that has to be done. One thing that I think is important for people to understand (is that) we have administered 72,410 booster doses and while we are encouraging more people to come out and get their booster doses, the people that are most vulnerable are people who are older and persons who have comorbidities.” Dr Anthony said.

He noted that that 11,674 people between ages 18 and 29 have taken the booster shot while 11,428 people between ages 30 have done so. In addition, 39; 27,082 of those between the ages of 40-59 have taken the shot while 21,739 booster shots were taken by persons 60-years-old and older.

“So if we want to encourage older people because they are more vulnerable then obviously we need to take up this 21,000 to a much higher number. As you get older, you would have some underlying illnesses and therefore this is a group that is more vulnerable and really should be coming out and getting their vaccines.

“We are not seeing that uptake that we would like to see among this age group.”