Western to receive 1,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses

THE National Control Centre (NCC) announced yesterday that 1,000 doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine will be sent to Western, which is experiencing the second highest surge in the country.
NCC deputy incident manager Dr Melinda Susapu said the doses marked for Western were from the batch of 8,000 doses donated by the Australian government for frontline health workers in the National Capital District that was currently being rolled out.
She said the figures of people vaccinated yesterday were not in but as of Tuesday more than 500 had been vaccinated.
“We have confirmation that we will be sharing at least 1,000 with Western frontline healthcare workers,” she said.
“The NCC and Western Provincial Health Authority are working on getting the vaccines there.”
Dr Susapu said Western was experiencing an alarming surge as well that needed to be attended to.
Asked about Chinese media reports that the PNG Government was deliberately delaying the arrival of vaccines from China, Dr Susapu said she was not aware of that.
She said a plan was set in place to mitigate the surge and there was two more weeks to go in the mitigation plan.
Dr Susapu said emergency medical teams from overseas would also be brought in to assist in filling in the gaps at the provincial level.
According to the Covid-19 situational report #67, five international emergency medical teams have confirmed their availability to support local health facilities in PNG, with team Rubicon to arrive today from the United States.
Australia’s Ausmat already have three people in the country and could potentially send a full team in the coming weeks.
Ausmat, St John Ambulance, Johanniter International and MSF have also indicated their availability to support.