Antivaxxers blamed for low uptake of booster doses

More persons are being urged to take their Covid-19 vaccine booster doses as the number is way below expectation.

Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, during the Covid-19 update on Monday said there is a challenge in administering the booster shots across the country.

So far, of the 324,981 people who took both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine only 48,669 have returned for the booster dose.

Regions One, Seven, Eight and 10 all recorded less than 1000 persons taking the booster dose.

I think there is a lot of room for improvement in these regions. Certainly, they can get past that thousand, but we have to encourage more and more people to come in, generally the booster doses, the rates have been quite low,” Dr. Anthony said.

He reiterated that with the Omicron variant, two doses of a vaccine are not enough to protect against the effects of this variant, especially older persons.

…we are seeing in the hospitals now, persons who are older coming in the hospital, especially those with comorbidities, but if you are fully protected, meaning first, second and booster dose, we are not seeing many of those persons coming into the hospital,” Dr. Anthony said.

The issue, he noted, lies with antivaxxers in some parts of the regions where persons peddle misinformation which can have a detrimental effect on the health of persons.

Some of these regions they are very problematic, there is a lot of hesitancy and unfortunately there are persons within these regions who are actively working against vaccines, these are antivaxxers, they don’t believe in the benefits of vaccines and they have been constantly undermining the message from the Ministry of Health and other important health authorities,” the health minister stated.

These antivaxxers, Dr. Anthony explained, are sometimes community leaders who are not competent to speak on such matters.

It might be a mixture of the Toshao or sometimes in other cases you might have religious leaders who are peddling this type of misinformation, they are not doing their community a good service, they are actually putting their community at risk,” Minister Anthony noted.

He is urging these individuals to desist from spreading misinformation.

We are trying to identify people like this, work with them, explain to them but some of them they are very obstinate in their views, but nevertheless we still have to try.”

He is encouraging community leaders, business people or other influential people in the various communities to encourage persons to get vaccinated and boosted once five months have passed since taking a second dose.

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