Ministry of Health Provides Update on Vaccinations for Children and Adults

News Five also spoke with Health Minister Kevin Bernard who provided an update on the rollout of pediatric vaccines across the country. He also spoke briefly on the gradual decline in the number of adults who have been showing up at vaccination sites to get inoculated against COVID-19.

Kevin Bernard

On the phone: Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health & Wellness

“As you know, we have already started the rollout of the vaccines this week.  I know that we are working with the schools.  The schools have been very much cooperating, they’ve been a lot of parents cooperating and we are aggressively going after our target so that we can try and vaccinate as much of our young children between the ages of five and eleven.  We have enough vaccines to at least vaccinate eighty-five percent of that target population. You know, from way back in, I believe in March, there have been a slow uptake of the adult vaccine.  We also have to understand that there were some persons who had taken their first dose of AstraZeneca and were not able to get the AstraZeneca since some of those were expired.  We are in the process of getting, I believe, ten thousand doses of AstraZeneca which is being donated to us and we’re also getting adult Pfizer vaccines.  Mexico has pledged to offer pediatric Pfizer but we opted to ask them to offer the adult Pfizer instead since we have enough of the pediatric Pfizer vaccines in hand.  We believe that the target of our young population, we will reach our goal of seventy percent by the end of the month of September, 2020.”