Children from ages 5 years and above can finally receive their COVID-19 vaccination early next month.

This was confirmed by Permanent Secretary for Health and Medical Services Dr. James Fong following the pledge made by the New Zealand Government in March this year to support Fiji with paediatric doses of the Pfizer vaccines.

The paediatric doses of Pfizer vaccines support the eligibility of children ages five to 11 for the COVID-19 vaccinations.

Dr. Fong has confirmed that vaccination for this age group would not be mandatory and would be administered upon parental consent.

He said the ministry planned for an early June rollout in the Central Division as a pilot program over two months.

However, he said this would depend on the confirmed dates of delivery.

“The deployment needs of the paediatric dose do require prior retraining of teams and a team will be coming in from NZ to facilitate this,” he said

“The Central Division has been selected for the initial pilot because our initial stocks will be thawed vaccine stocks and as such will need more rapid deployment.

“We will eventually get unthawed stocks which will be easier to deploy to more decentralized settings.”

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