HEALTH Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, on Wednesday, commended all persons involved in the vaccination drive for their hard work and commitment to getting persons immunised against the deadly novel coronavirus.

During Wednesday’s edition of the daily COVID-19 update, the minister said some 6,103 persons were vaccinated on Tuesday, with 2,507 being adults who took their first dose.

Another 916 persons took their second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 2,678 children took the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. The minister said this figure represents the highest number of vaccinations in any one day.

“So, I think this has set a new record for us in terms of how many persons would have received the vaccine yesterday [Tuesday] and I just want to compliment the staff, both of the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health for the work that they’ve been doing in rolling out this vaccination process [which] can be tedious and difficult.

“I’ve seen a lot of committed and dedicated people working on this and I really want to extend congratulations for assisting us in doing this because without them being out there, we are not going to get these numbers,” the Health Minister related.

But even as more persons embrace the vaccination drive, Minister Anthony said the number of positive cases is increasing significantly since the Delta variant is easier to transmit. For this reason, he again urged persons to be cautious and observe all COVID-19 protocols.

“So, if people are not taking the precautions and they’re exposed to infected persons, they are going to get the virus. Now, some people might get it mildly and some others might have the moderate form of the disease.

“So, if you get the severe form of the disease, it could require hospitalisation and possibly, you’d have to come into the ICU. So again, we’ve seen the numbers in hospitals go up, we’ve seen the ICU patients going up, we know this happens with the Delta variant, that’s why we’ve been urging people to be very cautious and take precautions” he added.

Dr. Anthony said approximately 2,205 antigen and PCR tests were done over the last 24 hours, and from this, 290 persons tested positive for COVID-19, taking the country’s overall active cases to 2,646 persons.

The minister also said 125 persons are currently hospitalised, with 37 persons in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the Ocean View facility. (DPI)