Covid-19 vaccination campaign off to a good start |15 January 2021

Mrs Cecile (left) and Mrs Bijoux during a press brief yesterday (Photo: Jude Morel)

Less than five days after President Wavel Ramkalawan kicked off the mass Covid-19 vaccination campaign, a total of 1,797 persons have received their first dose of the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine between January 10 and 13, 2021.

Almost three hundred of those vaccinated are on Praslin while the rest are on Mahé. The vaccination campaign reached La Digue yesterday, and the total number of people vaccinated by the end of yesterday is estimated to be over 2000.

Manager of the Extended Programme for Immunisation (EPI), Florida Bijoux, and chairperson of the National Technical Working Group for Vaccination, Kathleen Cecile, yesterday noted that they were satisfied with the turnout, especially when the figures collected shows a day-by-day increase of persons taking the jab.

“Based on the figures of yesterday [January 13] we are quite satisfied because we have seen an improvement in the uptake of persons being vaccinated. Based on the figures for today [January 14] at least two teams have reached close to 200 between 8am to 12pm and another team exceeded 100 during the course of the morning so we expect that most teams will reach the target of 200 per day, as from today,” said Mrs Cecile.

“Our main challenge was the low turnout on Monday afternoon, the second day of the vaccination programme, and on Tuesday the turnout was relatively low considering that we had five teams operating but that could be associated with the fact that Covid-19 is totally new in Seychelles[…]Covid-19 vaccine has been the subject of a lot of discussions everywhere so we have had to build up the confidence of our own staff and the public so we expect to see the figures rising.”

Mrs Cecile noted that the Ministry of Health is altering its deployment plan to ensure that it covers as many people as possible, so that the country would have immunized a large portion of the population by March 2021. The target is 70% which equates to around 67,000 to 70,000 people.

The health authorities has extended the vaccination programmes to large companies and public bodies such as the Indian Ocean Tuna (IOT) factory, Hunt Deltel, Land Marine, Seychelles Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA) and Seychelles People’s Defence Forces (SPDF) that have their own clinics and medical staff on hand.

In addition to its five vaccination teams based at ICCS, Praslin/La Digue, Yellow Roof and Green Roof at the Seychelles Hospital, and Anse Royale, the Ministry of Health is adding other teams to increase the number of persons inoculated.

Meanwhile, on Monday, the teams at the Yellow Roof and Green Roof will move to the Beau Vallon clinic and Grand Anse district administration office.

“The more stations we have the better and these companies will receive guidance from the minister. IOT has been asking us to handle them as priority because it is concern, they have a large number of staff and have positive cases, and so the sooner we get in there and start vaccinating the better,” further explained Mrs Cecile.

Nine teams or centres are expected to be operational by next week, each with the target of reaching 200 jabs by teams equating to 1800 vaccinations.

Mrs Bijoux noted that no one has claimed to have had a serious adverse effect from the vaccine since the campaign rolled out on Sunday.

Elsie Pointe