Set example, workers told

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By LULU MARK
HEALTH workers should take the lead in getting the Covid-19 vaccine and set the example for others to follow,” a doctor says.
After 11 weeks since receiving the first dose of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 in March, Dr Fiona Kupe and her colleagues went to the National Football Stadium in Port Moresby where the second dose was administered yesterday.
Dr Kupe is a paediatrician and the provincial child health head of the National Capital District Health Authority.
As a doctor working to promote child immunisation and roll out of vaccines, Dr Kupe said she had seen what immunisation had done for children in terms of preventing illness, saving lives and reducing child death over the past 10 years.
“Health workers are in the high risk group in this pandemic so we must take the vaccine to protect ourselves at the work place, the patients who don’t have Covid-19 and our families,” she said.
She said it was recommended that the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine be taken between eight to 12 weeks after the first dose.
“I encourage health workers and the elderly as well as those with comorbidities to get vaccinated.”
Dr Kupe said apart from the mild pain when the injection went into her skin, so far it was good and as a frontline health worker she felt safe.
According to the National Control Centre, as of Monday 41,988 Papua New Guineans had received the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Of these people 6,679 were health workers, 34,234 were essential workers and the other 1,075 were people above 45 years of age and with comorbidities.