National Covid-19 vaccination campaign Second round to start by end of this week |03 February 2021

Ms Bijoux (left) and Mrs Cecile during the press conference

The second round of the Covid-19 vaccination is set to start by end of this week.

This was announced by the deputy chief executive and the chairperson of the committee for vaccines Kathleen Cecile, accompanied by the manager for extended programme for immunisation, Florida Bijoux, in a press conference yesterday.

As of February 1, more than 35,000 people have had their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccines.

“This represents 50% of the target population to reach herd immunity which is 70,000 people. 25,200 Sinopharm and 9879 Covishield doses were administered during the first round of vaccination. We wanted to complete the first phase of the vaccination programme for Sinopharm in order to launch the second round. We will start calling people by groups to get their second jabs. We urge the people to please bring the small form they received when they got the first dose. As usual the first to receive the second dose will be the members of the Cabinet, ministers, essential workers, health care workers, police, defence forces, DRDM and other organizations,” explained Mrs Cecile.

The remaining Sinopharm doses are being kept for the second dose vaccination which will start at the end of this week.

“There is no need to panic,” stated Mrs Cecile, “as the Ministry of Health is getting another consignment of the Sinopharm vaccine.”

Mrs Cecile also noted that this week, “the patients doing dialysis have started to receive their vaccines at the Seychelles Hospital when they come for their treatment. We are not forgetting our elderly who are at home and could not come to the hospital. We are planning to administer their vaccinations at home and they will be advised. This also include people with disabilities”.

On La Digue, the Covishield will be administered as from this week-end or Monday next week.

Have people reported to the hospitals with symptoms from the vaccines? According to Ms Bijoux, so far nothing major has been reported. “Some came to the health centres with some vomiting issues. But with Covishield, we are seeing that some people are having headaches and fever. This is normal and we are also administering pain killers to those taking the Covishield jabs,” added Ms Bijoux.

For the second dose, the process will be different. The organisations will be given a number of people to send and there will be no counselling. So the time will be shorter. In order for better crowd management and to make the lines go quicker, Mrs Cecile noted that as from this week they are getting the help of the Red Cross Society of Seychelles.

“We are also asking people to please respect the time slots given to them in order to avoid the long queues. We are also looking into the possibility with the Department of Public Administration to send us some government staff whose work load is low to help us with crowd management, data entry in the different centres and also to help identify those who have not taken the jabs,” concluded Mrs Cecile.

Vidya Gappy