PM says target population for vaccination drive 400,000+

PRIME Minister Manasseh Sogavare says the target population for the country’s vaccination drive is around 414,500 people.

These he said are people aged 18 years and above based on the provisional figures from the 2019 population census.

The Prime Minister said we need to administer a total of 829,000 doses of COVID-19 to get full coverage.

Prime Minister Sogavare said by Friday last week, we have only administered 35,167 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in Honiara, Guadalcanal, Western, Choiseul and Malaita Outer Islands.

“This is only 4.2 percent of the total doses we need to administer in-order to protect this country in the event we have community transmission of COVID-19,” he said.

The Prime Minister adds also, last Friday, only 9,934 people have completed their vaccinations – having received two injections of their COVID-19 vaccines.

This he said represents only 2.4 percent of the total target population.

“This percentage simply means that only two people out of every 100 adults are vaccinated. Only two people from every 100 adults will be protected if we have community transmission of the virus. 98 out of every 100 adults will not be protected. In-fact as we see in other countries, these 98 adults from every 100 adults will be responsible for spreading the virus throughout the country,” he said.

The Prime Minister cautioned that we do not have to wait for the disease to reach our communities before we accept vaccines.

He encouraged Solomon Islanders to learn from the experiences from our neighboring countries such as Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

“Citizens must be vaccinated to ensure we are in a much better position to prevent community transmission incase the COVID-19 virus breaches our borders,” he said.

ENDS//