Arakan State primary school students to be vaccinated against Covid-19

By DMG 30 May 2022

DMG Newsroom
30 May 2022, Sittwe 

The Arakan State Public Health Department plans to administer the Covid-19 vaccine to 386,000 children aged 5 and older across the state’s 17 townships, with a new academic year in Myanmar fast-approaching. 

“We will give Covid-19 shots with Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccines. The vaccines have arrived here,” Dr. Soe Win Paing, assistant director of the Arakan State Public Health Department, told DMG. 

As basic education schools are scheduled to open in the first week of June, students aged 5 to 11 will be prioritised in the latest phase of the nation’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign, he said. 

More than 200,000 primary school students have enrolled so far, said the Arakan State education office chief, U Ba Htwe Sein. 

“We expect that more than 300,000 primary students will enrol,” he added. 

Students aged 12 to 18 were given Covid-19 shots in the previous academic year. 

According to the state’s Public Health Department, 1,728,212 people have received a first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, 1,323,907 people have been double-dosed, and 176,079 people have received booster shots. 

Since February, new coronavirus infections have declined dramatically both in Arakan State and across Myanmar, according to the regime’s Ministry of Health. The ministry said just 11 new cases were reported nationwide on May 30, down from a peak of about 6,000 new infections reported daily at the height of the virus’s worst wave in July of last year.