The Guinean health ministry on Wednesday said the country will soon begin vaccinating children aged 12 to 17 years to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, reported Reuters. The health officials said the vaccinations will start on Thursday in Conakry.
In a statement, the National Agency for Health Security said the Guinean government received shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines in late October and early November. It added that the vaccines would be used to begin the youth vaccination campaign.
The statement did not specify how many doses were delivered or where they came from.
Guinea is the first West African nation to begin vaccinations for this age group. Countries such as South Africa and Morocco in other regions of the continent have already begun youth vaccinations.
The Guinean government has purchased vaccines from China and Russia and also received more than 194,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through the United Nations-backed COVAX program.
The Guinean health authorities have administered more than 2.2 million vaccines against COVID-19, meaning about 5.6% of the country’s population is fully vaccinated, according to the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to Guinea’s Agency for Health Security, the country has reported more than 30,700 cases of COVID-19 including 387 deaths so far.
In related news, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday reported that there were about 3.1 million new cases globally, about a 1% increase from the previous week.
In its weekly report, the WHO reported that the coronavirus deaths increased by 10% in Europe in the past week, making it the only world region where both COVID-19 cases and deaths are steadily increasing. It was the sixth consecutive week that the virus has risen across the continent.
In Africa and Southeast Asia, COVID-19 deaths have declined by about a third. The reduction in death numbers has been reported despite the lack of vaccines in those regions.
