THE Ministry of Education (MoE) will be collaborating with the Ministry of Health (MoH) for the roll out of COVID-19 vaccination for children aged five to 11-years-old. This comes after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently cleared the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine for this age group.

This latest decision was disclosed by Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, on Friday, when she was questioned about this issue during a press conference held for the announcement of this year’s Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) results.

The minister noted that the MoE is currently working out a roll out schedule for the vaccination campaign since the MoH has given the green light for this age group of learners to be inoculated given the cleared for use by both the FDA and the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in the US.

“Guyana has been very clear that once that happened, we are also going to make that vaccine available to our children and that has happened so I can say now that the vaccine will be made available to five to 11 year olds,” Minister Manickchand said.

She clarified that the only role that the MoE would be playing is in facilitating schools as vaccination sites and organizing the scheduling and advertising of the vaccination dates.

“The MoE only role is to layout a schedule and make spaces available and get the message out to our parents and students. So, we are working in collaboration with the MoH. We can’t put shots in arms, we do not have that training or skill. We will put out the schedule and informing these schools that you will be at this location on this day, and then the MoH comes there. The same thing we do with the high schools and we are almost ready with that schedule,” she explained.

Starting in September, the MoE had collaborated with the MoH to inoculate students between the ages of 12 to 18 years old with the same Pfizer vaccine, after it was given approval in the US for use in that age group.

According to the minister, approximately 34 per cent of Guyanese between 12 to 18 years have received at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, while approximately 28 per cent are fully vaccinated.

This new age range will see most of the learners in the primary and nursery schools now being eligible for vaccination. According to the minister there are approximately 84,000 pupils in the primary school system and 27,000 children in the nursery school system.