GUYANA has reached a significant milestone in its fight against the deadly COVID-19 virus. According to Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, 51 per cent of the adult population is now fully vaccinated. This is indeed good news and full credit must be given to all those who played their part in ensuring that the vaccines were administered, despite significant levels of vaccine resistance.

The statistics are even more encouraging when consideration is taken of the fact that over 391,521 adults have already received their second doses, representing some 76.3 per cent of that age cohort. These figures do not compare badly with several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean where just around 37 per cent of the adult population has been fully vaccinated, according to recent data provided by the World Health Organization (WHO). In fact, there are several countries in the developed world, along with a few States in the USA where less than 50 per cent of the adult population are still to be fully vaccinated.

Part of the difficulty has to do with the overall lack of vaccine availability, and according to Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the situation is particularly severe in some countries in the region where under 10 per cent of the adult population is fully vaccinated. Indeed, we are fortunate to have a government that has literally been going out of its way to ensure that vaccines are procured in adequate supplies. In the words of President, Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, his government’s only focus is on protecting the health of Guyanese. Towards that end, all possible avenues were explored to source the vaccines.

According to the President, vaccine inequality continues to remain a major stumbling block in the fight against the virus and he made a passionate plea during his address to the United Nations General Assembly for the richer countries to do more to make supplies available to the poorer nations.

Now that Guyana is inching its way towards herd immunity, greater emphasis is now placed on the immunisation of the younger cohort of the population, namely the 12 to 17 age group. Already 28,345 or 38.9 per cent of that group have received their first doses of the vaccines while 19, 536 or 26.8 per cent received their second shot. Encouraging as these numbers may be, there is no reason for complacency and, as the Health Minister has pointed out, there are still significant regional variations in terms of uptake levels with Region 10 lagging behind the most with just around 22.3 per cent of the fully vaccinated age cohort. That situation resulted, in large measure, from the strong opposition to vaccine mandates by the opposition APNU+AFC Coalition and their political cohorts in the trade union movement, especially the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) and the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU).

Fortunately, there is evidence that the population is becoming much more receptive to the call by the Health Ministry for persons to be vaccinated, and Region Four, which at one stage was lagging behind, has now surged ahead of several other regions in terms of uptake level which is a major contributory factor to the country now surpassing the 50 per cent fully vaccinated benchmark. It is now for other regions to come fully on board if we are to, as it were, break the back of this pandemic within the shortest possible time.

The proactive measures taken by the Health Ministry coupled with the several policy interventions taken by the PPP/C administration to enforce compliance with statutory COVID-19 guidelines have certainly paid dividends and there are already some indications of a slowdown in infection rates. This, however, is no reason for complacency, and it is imperative for those who still remain unvaccinated to ensure that they take their vaccination shots as a matter of grave urgency. The government, for its part, is doing its best to make an adequate supply of the vaccines available to the population, something which still remains a challenge for several other countries in the world.

And while there is no reason for us to celebrate given the unpredictable nature of the COVID-19 virus and its ability to mutate to other variants, we must give credit where it is due: to the countless number of health professionals who have worked tirelessly and beyond the normal call of duty to ensure that the wider citizenry are protected against the COVID-19 pandemic. We owe them all a debt of gratitude.