Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Mr. Foster Rogers, gave a rather comprehensive update as regards the progress of the ongoing vaccination programme against the COVID-19 virus. He disseminated this information during the Government’s weekly press briefing on Monday, March 1st.
Accompanied by the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Aisha Andrewin, they both sought to enlighten the public about the encouraging vaccination activities that are currently taking place, primarily at the Princess Alexandra Hospital and at selected resorts. Up the time of the briefing 5,624 persons had registered, and of those 4,047 were actually vaccinated with at least the first dose.
Mr. Rogers stated: “The numbers are slowly climbing up, and we are on track. So far the proportion of persons who have been vaccinated is 49% females and 51% males. That is the breakdown as far as gender is concerned. In terms of age groups, between the ages of 18 and 34, 12% of those registered was vaccinated; between ages 35 to 49, 19% was vaccinated; between ages 50 and 64, 23% were vaccinated; and over age 65, 15% was vaccinated…We are still plowing forward. We hope to get 10 to 12 thousand by the end of March or early April.”
He said that administering the second dose will begin in April and, hopefully, the vaccinations would be over by the end of June with everyone being vaccinated. He mentioned that the Health Department also had the vaccination numbers by district, and that they will be targeting certain groups of people who may be lagging behind in deciding whether or not they would be accepting the vaccination.
“So far we are quite happy,” he said. “We are now beginning the fourth week, and we are actually above the level that we had anticipated we would be at this time.”
The CMO, Dr. Andrewin, reported: “So far we have vaccinated 4,047 persons with their first dose, and that number keeps rising steadily. That is good news, and we are quite encouraged. We just want to keep up the momentum until we reach that critical level.”
“We are in a position of having all the doses we need right now,” she remarked. “I cannot emphasise enough how fortunate Anguilla is, and we continue to be that fortunate in having acquired the vaccines. Hopefully, we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and in a few months we are hoping for some drastic change — and a return to normalcy.”
“On the international front,” the CMO said, “the news continues to be encouraging with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine recently being approved by the Centre for Disease Control in the U.S. So in a year or two down the line, the world may have at least six to ten COVID-19 vaccines that are all safe and effective. Anguilla is well poised to get out of this unscathed, having not seen any community transmission and the devastating effects as are seen in other countries, so we are in a real good position to restart our economy.”
Notwithstanding, the CMO launched an appeal for persons who have not yet registered for the vaccine to do so as soon as possible.
– Staff Reporter, James R. Harrigan
