Guyanese 60 years and older to get COVID-19 vaccines now

Guyanese 60 years and older are now being targeted to get immunised against the coronavirus. On Tuesday, Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony is encouraging mature Guyanese to look out for the immunisation sites at regional health facilities around the country, “once people know that they are over 60, they can come to one of the immunisation sites, we are using a lot of our health centres, so once they know we are in a community, they bring their ID card and come, once we can verify that their age is is 60 and above we would be able to give them the vaccines.”

The Ministry of Health plans to continue this immunisation in phases. The first was health workers with some 1800 health care workers receiving the vaccines.

There are a few health care workers who have not opted to take the vaccines but Dr Anthony said, the vaccines are not mandatory as he hopes those workers will reconsider before this process moves on to the other phases, “if you get a chance to take your vaccine take it,” Dr Anthony said.

The Health Minister said there has been scepticism about the vaccines and their side effects, “health workers have an option, they can either take the vaccine or if they don’t want it, that is okay too, but our job at the ministry and the government is to be able to offer them the vaccine and its their choice whether they would like to have the vaccine or not,” he said.

The Minister pointed out that it would be wiser to get immunised, “it’s protective, it would like to reduce infection and of course, prevents the most severe and critical  forms of the disease, so if you are immunised you are protected,” Dr Anthony pointed out.