 The arrival here of 25,000 doses of the COVID-Shield AstraZeneca vaccine has significantly boosted St. Lucia's ability to manage and mitigate the impacts of COVID-19. Government continues efforts to procure enough vaccines to have every St. Lucia vaccinated. On Thursday, the Ministry of Health and Wellness hosted a vaccination exercise at the Finance Administrative Building. Chief Medical Officer Dr Sharon Belmar George explained that over 10,000 individuals will be vaccinated with the most recent shipments. As you're aware, we started with our healthcare workers and we're doing the critical ones. What we are doing now is looking at 10,000 and to ensure we have the second dose. But we are also working very closely with the COVAX facility because we are awaiting our first batch of doses from them and they indicated that we would get our first 74,000 before May. So we are hoping that by next week or the week after that we get our first shipment so that there is no break in our dissemination of the vaccine. The vaccine will not only help in reducing transmission of the virus, but it will also reduce severe COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death. The AstraZeneca vaccine will also help in reducing pressures of treatment and care on the healthcare system and limit the impact of COVID-19. Dr Belmar George highlighted the significance of the vaccination exercise. Today is extremely important because we have representatives from various services coming in. They are leaders in their own right and it's important for us to get as many persons from the various sectors immunized. So we think that they will definitely assist in influencing the rest of our populations so we can get a level of herd immunity.