Frontline workers will be first to receive COVID-19 vaccine

The Cabinet of Antigua and Barbuda met for several hours today, seven members meeting face-to-face and six members utilizing virtual means. The custom of the Gaston Browne-led Cabinet is to invite experts to its meeting in order to enhance decision-making.

1. The Cabinet invited the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and an I.T. Expert from the Ministry of Health to address the rules and systems that will be put in place in order to deliver vaccines to front-line workers and others, beginning next week and when additional vaccines arrive Antigua thereafter.
2. The CMO informed that the object of vaccinating the Antigua and Barbuda population is to curtail the spread of the coronavirus to each other, and to ensure the safety of the destination. At the moment, the CMO reported, the system of certifying those who receive the vaccine is in keeping with past practice and the recording system proposed by PAHO/WHO. A manual system will commence until the data can be inputted into an electronic data system. The e-system to be used, the I.T. Expert informed, will be operational in 14 days, following the granting of the license and the certification by the relevant authorities. Each person vaccinated will be given a card/certificate and the data will be entered in the database for examination by relevant authorities, when necessary.

2021. It is agreed that frontline workers will be among the first to receive the vaccine when they arrive Antigua. It is estimated that the 5,000 doses, which Dominica will share with Antigua and Barbuda, will arrive Antigua tomorrow Thursday, February 11, 2021. The vaccines will be transported by an RSS aircraft to Antigua and the other OECS countries which will be gifted the vaccines by Dominica. The doses will serve 2,500 frontline workers; the mixing of batches is not a good idea, the CMO informed. All necessary preparations to receive and to store the vaccines are already in place.

• The Frontline workers include the nurses and doctors at the MSJMC, the nurses and doctor at the Hannah Thomas Hospital in Barbuda, the police, Immigration and Customs Officers, Camp Blizzard, teachers with co-morbidities and vulnerable students. A registry will be established that will list all those who will receive from the first batch beginning next week.

1. 40,000 doses, at no cost, will be dispatched to Antigua and Barbuda by the Indian Government shortly, although a precise arrival date has not yet been fixed; and the Prime Minister has written seeking an additional 100,000 doses to be paid-for by government. A charter aircraft will have to fly the doses into Antigua. Other Caribbean countries likely to receive from India will also share in the expense of the charter flight. 40,000 doses will also be delivered under the COVAX agreement.

1. Healthcare workers and private medical practitioners and their staffare among the second group who will be receiving the vaccines from the second dispatch to arrive. Those elderly citizens living in long-term care facilities, and the elderly living in communities and villages will also be quickly served by the vaccines. Everyone who wants to be vaccinated will be given an opportunity. Parliamentarians and Cabinet staff are also to be vaccinated. The Cabinet continues to urge all residents of Antigua and Barbuda to ready themselves. An Education Committee has been established to teach the population of the vaccine’s importance.

1. Thus far in the month of February 2021, approximately 139 new infections have been reported; every effort has to be made to reduce that rate, the Cabinet and the CMO agreed. More of us must abide by the protocols.

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