With close to 48,000 Barbadians having received the first dose of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, the country’s vaccination campaign will turn its attention to ensure the country’s elderly shut-ins get the jab, its coordinator revealed Friday.
National vaccination co-cordinator Major David Clarke said with the first phase, which included frontline workers, some people aged 70 and over and others aged 18-69 with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) almost completed, the focus would now be turned to conducting shut-in visits.
As of Thursday, 46,327 people had received the vaccine with another 1,500 people expected to get the jab Friday.
Health authorities hope to deliver a further 1,000 jabs over the weekend, he said.
With more than 71,000 over-70s, Major Clarke said it is critical to get to elderly people who cannot move around.
A team from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was able to perform 23 shut-in vaccinations on Thursday but a further 600 to 700 shut-ins are currently scheduled, he said.
Major Clarke said: “Next week we are doing shut-ins and other people. So we’re not going to be doing vaccinations at vaccination centres but teams are going to be going to do shut-ins. As you appreciate we have an elderly population, we have 71,000 people over 70 years old and so we still have quite a number of people to vaccinate in terms of the shut-in people, people who are in their 80s and 90s and a couple of people over 100.
“The shut-in clinic, that’s a much slower process but it has to be done. It’s the same team that we send to the shut-in but because you’re only dealing with one person in a location and you have to provide the same infrastructure, same doctor, same oxygen in case something happens.”
After Government donated 10,000 of the 100,000 doses given by India, Major Clarke said health authorities had been able to vaccinate more people than expected.
He said: “It left us with 90,000 or 45 000 vials that we have. The vials have been yielding maybe one or two extra doses per vial because we have an excellent public health system and the nurses are very, very good at making every single dose count.
“So out of 45,000 doses, we have actually got 3,000 doses more so far and probably will get another 2,000 doses or so out of what is remaining of that initial allotment,’
The army medic indicated that Government would retain the remaining half of the doses.
“We have to keep the 45,000 vials for the second dose of this particular one and then we expect the next batch to come and once that next batch comes we will then start up category two and then move on that way,” he said.
(RB)
