Around 2,000 booster shots of coronavirus have been administered island-wide, the health minister announced yesterday.

Kim Wilson said boosters were being administered at nursing homes, the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital and the National Sports Centre and were giving about 300 shots a day.

She added the uptake figures were “an amazing achievement”.

Boosters started at nursing homes on October 9.

The hospital started giving boosters to people with weakened immune systems and has moved on to include people aged 65 and over.

The National Sports Centre is dedicated to administering the boosters to seniors.

Ms Wilson said, based on current demand, that healthcare workers should start to get booster shots in about four weeks’ time.

She thanked the executive of the Bermuda Industrial Union for encouraging its members to get vaccinated.

Ms Wilson said hospital admissions and statistics for deaths linked to Covid-19 continued to show a higher toll among the unvaccinated.

Ms Wilson said that 298 people had been admitted to hospital with Covid-19 between January 11 and October 16.

There were 265 people – 89 per cent – unvaccinated, and 33, or 11 per cent, were fully vaccinated.

There were 83 deaths in hospital, with 70 unvaccinated and 13 vaccinated.

Wesley Miller, the chief of staff at the Bermuda Hospitals Board, said the uptake of vaccination among hospital staff was “going up slowly, but the trend is in the right direction”.

He added: “Contrary to much earlier, when we struggled to get 50 per cent of our nurses vaccinated, we now have 81 per cent who have had at least one dose and 76 per cent are fully immunised.”

Dr Miller said doctors were more than 90 per cent immunised.

He added hospital staff in general showed a 66.5 per cent rate for one jab and 63 per cent were fully immunised.