GEORGETOWN, Guyana (CMC) — Guyana’s Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony says that starting this week, the COVID-19 vaccination campaign will be targeting children between the ages of five and 11.

“From next week we will be introducing the vaccines for children five to 11 years of age. These are special formulations, these are not the regular vaccines that we have been giving, this would be a special vaccine made by Pfizer, especially for this age category,” Anthony said.

The vaccines for the children form part of a donation from the Government of Spain of 50,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Half of that amount are the ones intended for children.

Guyana is also expecting to receive additional vaccines later this year through the COVAX initiative.

“We have a limited supply and so it would be on a first-come, first-serve basis when we start rolling this out and we will have enough vaccines for 25,000 children in the first batch of vaccines we will be giving so those people who are interested they will have to make sure that they come early.”

According to Anthony, he wants to see children better protected against the virus.

“Part of the difficulty here is the need for permission from the parents. So, if a young person does not have permission from their parents, we cannot vaccinate them and so these numbers have remained relatively low.”

The Ministry of Health again reminded the public that the best bet against COVID-19 is to be fully vaccinated.