Antigua and Barbuda is one case away from achieving a COVID free status.
The June 11 Covid-19 dashboard revealed no new laboratory-confirmed cases of the virus from 164 samples tested by the Sir Lester Bird Mount St. John Medical Centre.
Consequently, the country has only 1 active case of Coronavirus.
The total number of persons who have contracted the virus in Antigua and Barbuda since March 13, 2020, is 1263, with 1220 recoveries and 42 deaths.
There are no hospitalized cases and the active case is isolated.
Meantime, the government is working on importing several other vaccines, to give individuals a choice, amid the hesitancy of Antiguans and Barbudans availing themselves to take the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines.
The AstraZeneca vaccine has been under review after reports of blood clots and several individuals are now refusing to take the jab.
Minister of Information, Melford Nicholas stated that several persons have been hesitant of taking the AstraZeneca vaccines and have expressed a preference for the Sputnik V vaccines.
“It is more than a spot of bother for us in terms of us being able to get closer to herd immunity. We have other options for other vaccines,” he added.
“We are looking of getting beyond the 16 thousand AstraZeneca vaccine but the potential for another purchase of another batch of AstraZeneca vaccine. We also have an option of looking at the Johnson and Johnson set of vaccines. We would have already received the emergency use authorization from the Pharmacy Council for one of the Chinese vaccines as well,” Nicholas said.
“As many of these vaccines that we can procure and make available to the public are on the critical list,” he ended by stating.
Meanwhile, on the vaccination front, as of June 11, 34,883 first doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered while 23,844 are now fully immunized.
