Guyana’s Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony has warned that those who “jump the queue” in accessing COVID-19 vaccines will be subjected to serious penalties.
“We will be asking people to walk with their ID card so that we can verify who they are, and take the relevant information and if there are persons who are jumping the queue and we discover them, then they’re going to face stiff penalties. We want to make sure that we were able to prioritise these vaccines to people who need them the most and are most at risk,” he said.
The Minister said that the vaccines are being rolled out in a phased approach to ensure that the most exposed or vulnerable groups of the population benefit first. He explained that priority remains on immunising frontline health workers along with persons ages 60 and above, followed by persons with comorbidities.
“Our deployment of vaccines we can envisage … maybe four phases. The first phase where we want to prioritise healthcare workers. We can say that is Phase I (A), then Phase I (B) would be all the people. Phase One (C) would be persons with comorbidities, Phase I (D) would be other essential workers like teachers.”
This will be followed by a second phase which would include members of the joint services and persons over 50 years old. The third phase will see everyone above the age of 18 being inoculated.
Minister Anthony noted that there might be a possible fourth stage where children are immunised, but none of the vaccines have yet been approved for children.
