Phnom Penh: A surprise announcement from the Prime Minister on Wednesday morning. Cambodia is to start vaccinating children between the ages of 6 and 12. The vaccination rollout starts on Friday morning at the Peace Palace, barely six weeks after vaccinations for children aged between 12 and 17 started. The Prime Minister says the decision to vaccinate children as young as six is aimed at getting them back to school as soon as possible. He says the next consideration will be to vaccinate children from the age of three.

Prime Minister Hun Sen will kick-off the next phase of child vaccinations on Friday morning. He says the first shots will go into young arms at the Peace Palace, and those children have already been invited. The kingdom has approximately 1.9-million children in the 6-12 age group. The Prime Minister has emphasised that the availability of Covid-19 vaccines is not an issue:

“We have decided to vaccinate children from six to 12 years old. If we do not vaccinate these children from six to 12 years old, we will not be able to open primary schools because this age group are in primary schools and we have only opened secondary schools. It is so difficult. On the other hand, vaccines are being studied in many countries and they are already been given to children under the age of 12. Therefore, the vaccination is not really much of a concern. The decision to vaccinate this age group has been made and we already have the vaccines in hand.”

On Sunday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the Prime Minister that the Chinese government will donate an additional three million doses of vaccines to Cambodia. On Monday, UNICEF Representative Foroogh Foyouzat confirmed to EAC News that more vaccines are also coming through the COVAX initiative. As of 14 September, Cambodia has already fully-vaccinated 71.81% of the kingdom’s total population of 16 million.