Jamaica to receive shipment of additional vaccine in July

In the coming week, the COVID-19 vaccines stock has been supposed to increase in Jamaica to continue the vaccination programmes in the country.

Dr Christopher Tufton, Minister of Health and Wellness, said that the next shipment of the COVID-19 vaccine supposed to arrive on the island in the month of July through the COVAX facility. Dr Christopher Tufton also stated that along with the next shipment of Johnson and Johnson vaccines in August. Jamaica has been marked as the seventh nation that supposed to receive 2.3 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. The facility has been working to speed up the vaccines mobilisation into many countries globally to mitigate the effect of the COVID-19 virus spread.

Dr Christopher Tufton, Minister of Health and Wellness, said that they have been discussing negotiating other vaccine supplies, and he was more confident then than he would have been two months ago that they would have additional supplies in due course. Only those vaccines have been procured by the Jamaican government that have been approved by the World Health Organisation.

Dr Christopher Tufton, Minister of Health and Wellness, said that might not be the same AstraZeneca, although they knew they would be getting AstraZeneca. It might be a different brand, but a brand that has WHO-approved and clearly would had been in the global population and has been used, tried, tested and proven.

Dr Christopher Tufton said that there had been many discussions with the United States through CARICOM, Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and involving the Ministry of Health and Wellness, Ministry of Foreign Trade, and those discussions were progressing. They have been hopeful that decisions, logistical arrangements and deliveries would take place in a relatively short period of time.

Dr Christopher Tufton said that he does not think that in the months to come, they were going to have to focus on how they deal with hesitancy, meaning they would probably have the supplies, and they were then going to had to convince Jamaicans those were not sure why that was important to take the vaccines.