The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) urg­ing on coun­tries in the re­gion to in­te­grate their COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion ef­forts in­to rou­tine im­mu­niza­tion cam­paigns.

The call came from PA­HO Di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne in a news re­lease yes­ter­day.

"This will en­able preg­nant women to get their COVID vac­cine along­side their flu shot and tetanus, diph­the­ria and per­tus­sis vac­cines, and will al­so al­low par­ents to get their shot while their chil­dren get pro­tect­ed against dis­eases like measles and po­lio," Dr Eti­enne said.

She added, "Sim­i­lar­ly, the emer­gency in­fra­struc­ture that was set up to get COVID-19 vac­cines in­to arms as quick­ly as pos­si­ble should al­so be lever­aged to im­prove rou­tine vac­ci­na­tion up­take, mak­ing it more con­ve­nient and ac­ces­si­ble for fam­i­lies to catch up on all their shots at once.”

She not­ed the COVID vac­ci­na­tion ef­fort “has shown us that suc­cess is pos­si­ble when coun­tries and peo­ple work to­geth­er to em­brace vac­cines.”

The call comes in light of da­ta show­ing that one-third of the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca is still un­vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19.

Eti­enne said some coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean are yet to vac­ci­nate half of their pop­u­la­tions against COVID-19.

Eti­enne says on­ly 14 coun­tries in the re­gion have reached the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) goal of 70 per cent vac­ci­nat­ed ahead of the June 30 tar­get, while eight have on­ly 60 per cent vac­ci­nat­ed.

She says in the Caribbean, Haiti, Ja­maica, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and St Lu­cia have 30 per cent of cit­i­zens yet to re­ceive first dos­es and in Latin Amer­i­ca, Guatemala, Guyana and Paraguay have 50 per cent of cit­i­zens yet to re­ceive first dos­es.

Eti­enne has called on coun­tries to get at least 70 per cent of their pop­u­la­tions vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19.

PA­HO says that while there are now suf­fi­cient sup­plies of COVID-19 vac­cine to meet de­mand every­where in the Amer­i­c­as, some coun­tries con­tin­ue to lag be­hind.

PA­HO is now work­ing with coun­tries to pro­vide tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance to vac­ci­na­tion cam­paigns, as well as plan­ning and com­mu­ni­ca­tions sup­port to help close the gaps.

Eti­enne notes that the vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve al­so de­pends on in­di­vid­u­als tak­ing the ini­tia­tives on their own.

“Vac­ci­na­tion is a fam­i­ly af­fair, and it’s up to all of us to make sure our loved ones are pro­tect­ed,” she said.

“If you or a fam­i­ly mem­ber have not yet been vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19, talk to your health­care provider about your ques­tions and doubts,” she added.

Turn­ing to the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion in the re­gion, PA­HO said while the num­ber of COVID-19 in­fec­tions re­port­ed in the Amer­i­c­as dropped by 2.3 per cent this week and con­tin­ue to de­cline, cas­es did in­crease by 11.2 per cent in North Amer­i­ca and have al­so spiked in the Caribbean.

PA­HO added that the num­ber of deaths has de­creased by 15.2 per cent (to 4,797), show­ing that vac­cines are work­ing well to pro­tect peo­ple from hos­pi­tal­iza­tion and death.