Covid-19 vaccine uptake in Latvia's senior population gradually increasing - health minister

RIGA - Vaccine uptake among people over 60 years of age is gradually increasing, Health Minister Daniels Pavluts (Development/For) said as he opened the campaign Help Yourself. Help Others. 

The minister praised the volunteer movement #vieglipalidzet for its ability to swiftly mobileize and launch the campaign aimed at involving individual seniors and their organizations in promoting vaccination for Covid-19 among hesitant seniors. 

The health minister said that the campaign is an extremely useful activity along with all other measures that are being taken to promote vaccination of seniors and end to the Covid-19 crisis this winter. Pavluts underlined that Covid-19 poses especially serious risks to the elderly as they are more prone to getting severely ill, ending up in hospital and dying from the infection. 

"Younger people also get severely ill with Covid-19, but hospitals are filled primarily by  our seniors. In recent weeks, the share of immunized seniors has been slowly growing, but the pace tends to increase. Our efforts are yielding results! At the beginning of October, seniors made up just 23 percent of those who received their first vaccine doses, but by last week their share had grown significantly, exceeding 33 percent," Pavluts said. 

The health minister informed that last week the first shot was administered to 19,000 seniors, but that 171,000 people over 60 years of age still remain unvaccinated. According to the minister, these are people that need assistance so they too can get jabbed and that vaccination of at-risk groups remain a priority.