Consideration to COVID-19 vaccine passport by Guyana

The Guyana is still working on the introduction of the COVID-19 travel certificate as the countries have been continuously working toward mitigating the transmission of the coronavirus pandemic. This information has been given by the Minister of Health of Guyana, Dr Frank Anthony.

Minister Anthony said that many countries still don’t have access to vaccines, and if they make that compulsory and there aren’t enough vaccines, that could be problematic. For those countries that had vaccines, they have been starting to put measures in place, such as the travel certificate.

He said, some of these types of considerations they had to take on board, especially if countries to which the airlines here fly, would be asking for such travel documents. So, if that becomes a requirement, then they probably would have to follow suit, but the way things are going, it looks like a lot of countries were going to be implementing this vaccine passport or travel certificate, but there’s still that discussion that is ongoing.

Anthony noted that inquiries were continuous into the alleged fraud of a COVID-19 vaccination certificate. On Thursday, police caught a woman who purportedly copied a vaccination card to travel overseas.

The Health Minister said that they were going to take very stringent, severe actions against persons who attempt to produce these certificates because it’s a severe matter.

Guyana Health Minister said that if they were not vaccinated, and they then tender some document to pretend that they had been vaccinated, they should face the full brunt of the law because they were putting themselves at the risk and they were putting others at risk.

To date, a total of 216,862 persons has taken the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, whereas 83,729 persons are fully vaccinated. Regions 6 and 1 continue to lead in the vaccination campaign with 52.4 % and 52.3%, respectively.

In Regions 8 and 10, the records are continuously low in numbers of vaccination at 28.4 % and 13.2%, respectively. The Health Minister said that vaccine education drives have been ongoing in those areas.