Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley has announced that her island will receive 7000 doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine from Guyana today.
This is the second vaccine donation to Barbados from Guyana. It was Barbados that made the first donation of vaccines to Guyana to kickstart Guyana’s vaccination drive earlier this year.
The Prime Minister of Barbados is hoping that donation of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine will aid her country’s vaccination drive which like many other Caribbean countries has been plagued with vaccine hesitancy.
Guyana received 34,000 doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine in August as part of a purchase agreement through the African Union.
The Government of Guyana has been slow in its rollout of the one-shot vaccine, with just over 100 doses being administered one month after the vaccine was procured. The Government initially focused its rollout of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine in the Hinterland communities.
The Ministry of Health recently decided to offer the vaccine during its other vaccination drives in various parts of the country. It is still not being administered widespread.
Over 70% of Guyana’s adult population has received a first dose of one of the COVID-19 vaccines with just over 40% of the adult population being fully vaccinated.
Last Friday, Guyana received a donation of over 100,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine from the United States to further boost its vaccination drive. The US previously donated over 140,000 doses of the same vaccine, which the government has been using to vaccinate pregnant women and children between the ages of 12 and 18.
The Health Ministry is now preparing to make the Pfizer vaccine more widely available.
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