Province receives first batch of Covid-19 vaccines

EAST New Britain (ENB) received its first batch of the Covid-19 vaccines on Friday from Port Moresby.
Provincial health authority (PHA) director of public health and deputy Covid-19 incident manager Ben Mode said the 600 vials of vaccines were stored safely and should cater for 6,000 people.
He said the first priority were frontliners, but there would be awareness and training before the rollout.
Mode said only people between the ages 18 and 65 would be vaccinated.
The programme will be for all four districts – Kokopo, Rabaul, Gazelle and Pomio.
“This is basically to cover the first three per cent of the targeted age group in the province, the three per cent includes the front-liners which are the health workers and the health facility workers and from our estimation, this will cover about 1,500 people,” Mode said.
He said in their planning, the other frontliners included the Correctional Services, police, staff working at the airport and wharves, staff at the quarantine centres and other major institutions.
Mode said in the next couple of weeks, they would be having their advocacy meetings with the frontline health staff from the provincial level to the district level and then later conduct two to three workshops for the health workers on the usage and conduction of the vaccines to health workers in the four districts.
He said awareness sessions would start in the province this week and would be done by health officers.