In a sprint to success, the Ministry of Health and Wellness’s four-day vaccination blitz surpasses initially set inoculation targets winning the race against possible AstraZeneca vaccine waste.

Addressing Wednesday evening’s (April 14) COVID Conversations, Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton announced that, after undertaking an ambitious goal to vaccinate a total of 75,000 Jamaicans over a four-day vaccination blitz period, as of Tuesday, April 13, a whopping 83,828 Jamaicans had received the jab.

The recent increase to the country’s vaccination efforts, owing to the four-day blitz, brings to 135,473, the number of Jamaicans who have received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccinations to date. This represents an achievement of seven per cent of the country’s target to vaccinate some 1.9 million Jamaicans by March 2022.

Taking the time to commend the various stakeholders whose tireless efforts made the blitz exercise a success, Tufton stated that, for the remainder of the week through to the weekend, vaccinations will not take place.

This will allow health professionals to get some much-needed rest, as well as attention to be paid to other public health needs outside of the realm of COVID-19 vaccinations.

In addition, Tufton said: “I think it is important for us to stop, to take stock, to reflect, to assess what happened, where it did well, where it didn’t, and then recalibrate to do better.”

Further vaccination efforts will resume on Monday (April 19), to inoculate individuals with the remaining vaccine supplies. However, this will take place on a phased or priority grouping basis.

As it relates to subsequent blitz exercises, the minister expressed that these would need to be influenced by more vaccine arrivals, which he says should take place within a week, as the country is anticipating another 55,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the COVAX facility.