Health Minister Dr. Christopher Tufton - file photo
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Dr. Christopher Tufton
Health Minister Dr. Christopher Tufton has revealed that the vaccine now being implemented overseas is not included in the vaccine programme into which Jamaica has bought.
Jamaica has made a down payment of a little more than US$1 million to the COVAX Facility, designed to accelerate equitable access by countries globally to safe COVID-19 vaccines.
However, speaking in the House of Representatives Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Tufton said the vaccines covered by the programme are still being tested.
He said three are in the final phase of trials and the government believes these represent "the best hope of having a vaccine in a relatively short time."
A 90-year-old woman on Tuesday became the first person to be given a COVID shot as part of a mass vaccination programme being implemented across the UK.
It was the first of 800,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that will be given in coming weeks.
US regulators on Tuesday confirmed the vaccine is 95 per cent effective, paving the way for it to be approved for emergency use in that country.
Tempering expectations
But Dr. Tufton is seeking to temper local expectations regarding a vaccine, disclosing that only about 16 per cent of the population is expected to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of 2021.
"The projected schedule as we have it at this time - and I say projected because it can change - is to have a vaccine ready for administration to some one per cent of the initial 16 percentage of the population by April 2021... another three per cent by mid 2021 and the remaining percentage by the end of 2021," the minister outlined.
Dr. Tufton said Jamaicans must continue to take precautions as the country could be dealing with COVID-19 for at least another year.
"I want us to be very clear that we can't hang all of our hopes and afford to be complacent on the knowledge or the hope that there is going to be a vaccine very soon and that most persons are going to have access to it. I mean that is an ideal, but an ideal that is not likely to be achieved at least in the short term," he cautioned.
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