By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas received 57,330 doses of the Pfizer vaccine yesterday, the country’s fourth batch of COVID-19 vaccines through the World Health Organization’s COVAX Facility.

Health and Wellness Minister Dr Michael Darville said as a result of the shipment, the country will start to increase vaccinations at various centres.

“Not only in the capital of New Providence or Grand Bahama, but also throughout the Family Islands,” he told reporters.

Earlier this month, the government announced that first doses of the Pfizer vaccine would not be offered as of October 18 due to “diminishing supplies”.

Asked when first doses will resume in view of yesterday’s shipment, Dr Darville said: “We have our team on standby. We were waiting for them to physically hit the ground.

“We (are) going to move very quickly because we (have) people at all of our centres expecting to be vaccinated and they want Pfizer. The programme was scaled back a little bit because we needed to have the vaccines on ground. They’re here. They will be stored effectively and you will begin to see even greater rollout because the appetite and the demand for vaccines, in particular Pfizer, is definitely on the rise.

 “I believe that we will begin to see some rollout as early as this week. Probably tomorrow,” he said when asked about a timeline.

 As for how many vaccines are going to the Family Islands, Dr Darville said “it’s all based on demand.”

 “As we speak right now, we’re vaccinating throughout the Family Islands, mainly the ones that have high cases of COVID. That’s ongoing.

 “We knew that the vaccine would come. There was a tentative date for November 1 and thanks to PAHO and thanks to all of the parties involved we’re actually early.”

 In her remarks, Pan American Health Organization/WHO representative Dr Eldonna Boisson said The Bahamas vaccination programme was doing an “excellent job” of vaccine roll outs as they became available.

 She noted that the main challenge has been limited access to vaccines at times due to global demand still “outstretching” supply. The country has Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca vaccines.

 While she encouraged persons to get vaccinated as soon as they can, Dr Boisson underscored that vaccines are not the sole elixir to end the pandemic.

  “I just wish to remind you that at this time, vaccines alone cannot get us out of this pandemic – they cannot. We do not have sufficient supply of vaccination to interrupt the spread of this vaccine and the more it moves around and spreads person-to-person the greater there is a risk of an even more severe variant emerging,” she explained.

 “Vaccines are one very good tool in our armory in this fight against the COVID-19 virus. However, we must continue to use the public health and social measures that we know work to reduce the spread of the virus and all its variants.”