Adults go after Pfizer, slowdown among teens

Although the vaccination of children with the Pfizer covid19 vaccine has slowed down over the past week, adults continue to rush to get it.

And while adults getting vaccinated is a positive step, Health Minister, Terrence Deyalsingh is encouraging parents and guardians to get their children vaccinated before the vaccines expire.

On September 3 the Prime Minister announced 50,000 Pfizer doses would be allocated to members of the general public to vaccinate 25,000 people. Since then about 15,000 adults were vaccinated with Pfizer, which included 444 health care workers and 366 pregnant women.

At the Ministry of Health virtual press conference on Saturday, Deyalsingh said, “Since we opened up the Pfizer to the general public this week, and I don’t want the public to be misled by the numbers, many more adults now are taking advantage of the Pfizer vaccines as opposed to children. And while that is good for the adults, it is not so good for the children.”

He said of the 90,000 school-aged children in the country, 33,540 got their first dose of Pfizer, and that number included 230 migrants. When the vaccination of children ages 12-18 began on August 18, the daily uptake was around 3,400 but on Thursday and Friday the uptake was 550 and 549 respectively.

With about 60,000 doses of Pfizer left reserved for children, he encouraged parents and guardians to get their children vaccinated as soon as possible to protect their children, especially from the delta variant, to allow them to return to physical school, and for their lives to return to some degree of normalcy.