EVEN as the government continues to implement strategic systems to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, some 7,831 children have tested positive for the deadly virus since the first case was confirmed in March, 2020.

Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, made this disclosure during his daily COVID-19 update on Monday.

He stated that while most of the cases have been mild and did not require hospitalisation, parents are still advised to take the necessary precautions to protect their children from contracting the virus.

Minister Anthony noted that, in addition to 55 children being hospitalised, 17 deaths were recorded.

He reminded that children, like adults, need to take the necessary precautions, which include sanitising, social distancing, and vaccination, to protect themselves from the effects of the virus.

The government, since August 2021, has been rolling out an aggressive vaccination programme for children ages 12-17, who are eligible to receive the American-manufactured Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

The Pfizer vaccine, in 2021, became the first COVID-19 vaccine to receive the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval and became the first vaccine approved for distribution among children under the age of 18.

Currently, approximately 32,978 adolescents or 45.2 per cent of Guyana’s population have received their first dose, while 23,528 or 32.3 per cent have received both doses.

CHALLENGES
Even as the vaccination numbers for this age group continue to increase daily, Minister Anthony is pleading with parents to get their children vaccinated. He highlighted that vaccination minimizes the effects of the virus.

He used the opportunity to remind parents that control over adolescent vaccination lies completely in their hands since proof of parental approval has to be shown or given before the vaccine is administered to a child.

“I’m hoping that parents understand the seriousness of getting their children immunised so that we could protect them from COVID. We still have children who would get infected and when they get infected a minority of them can have the severe form of the infection and some of that can be fatal so we really need people to remain protected. We have the means of protecting people which is vaccines but we have to encourage people to get them,” said Minister Anthony.

Meanwhile, the minister noted that the government is currently assessing ways to procure vaccines for children ages five to 11.

“We have been working through a couple of mechanisms to try and get vaccines for children between 11 and five. One such mechanism is through CARICOM and they have been having discussions with the folks at Pfizer to see whether or not the Caribbean region would be able to access vaccines. We have made known how much of these vaccines we would need for our population and were anxiously waiting for those negotiations to be completed for us to get an understanding of when we can access those vaccines,” he added.