360,000 Paediatric Doses Of COVID-19 Vaccines Needed To Vaccinate Children Aged 5 To 11: Dr Fong

The Ministry of Health and Medical Ser­vices will need 360,000 paediatric doses of the COVID-19 vaccines to fully vaccinate chil­dren aged five to 11.

Ministry’s Perma­nent Secretary Dr James Fong made the revelation in anticipa­tion of the 50,000 doses that was pledged by the New Zealand Gov­ernment last week.

The number of chil­dren, who fall below the age group, stood at around 180,000 and 360,000 doses would be needed for two doses.

He said talks were still ongoing with the New Zealand Govern­ment on the arrangement of how the paediatric doses of Pfizer would be brought over to Fiji.

He said the ministry was already outlining plans for the adminis­tration of these vaccines.

“We might have this as part of our normal vaccination pro­grammes in school as we give measles and all other vaccines that we have been living with for so many years,” he said.

“This will be adopted in the same manner.”

He said the ministry had taken careful steps to watch the sci­ence around the vaccination pro­gramme.

“We have taken due advice from world authorities on this part of the deployment of vaccines and the fact that these vaccines have been deployed to millions of chil­dren already,” he said.

“It means that we have taken due diligence.”

He encouraged parents to have their children vaccinated when the doses are made available.

“I do know that we have a lot of communication narratives to put out so that we ensure that we put out a lot of community engage­ments

“We are riding off the good will that we have achieved 94 per cent among adults so we hope to con­tinue to support children vaccina­tion.

“Our testing numbers are low but still we are reporting cases every day.

“This is why vaccinating the greater population would ensure the best level of safety among the people.”