Vaccinations reach only 6,500 injections given in new five-week push

The Government has missed its first weekly target of delivering 10,000 COVID-19 vaccine shots in its bid to vaccinate 50,000 Barbadians in five weeks.

As of Friday, only about 6,500 jabs had been delivered despite the rollout of mobile vaccinations at a variety of public locations across the country.

One of the inoculation campaign coordinators remained optimistic that the uptake of vaccines will slowly rise, suggesting that jabs were now being given to the hesitant.

The total number of fully vaccinated individuals passed the 100,000 mark this week, representing 37.2 per cent of the population. So far, 130,046 people have received initial doses and 100,800 have been given both doses.

Mottley had dangled the prospect of either reducing or ending coronavirus restrictions when she set the challenge last Saturday.

She said then: “We’re now just under 6,500 I think a week. So I’m asking to go a little harder…gimme dah lil extra to get to 10,000. And if we can do that and we can maintain that each week for the next five weeks then we will have the majority of those persons fully vaccinated before the end of November, before Independence Day and Christmas, such that we may as a country consider the options of a significant review and removal of restrictions that we have in place.”

But on Friday, joint Coordinator of the National Vaccination Programme Major David Clarke disclosed that health care workers had since then only administered about half of the suggested number of first doses.

“She said 10,000 vaccines, she meant 10,000 first doses. So first this week from Saturday to today, we would have done over 5,000 first doses, but we would not have done 10,000. But in second doses we would have done maybe 4,000 second doses. So we would probably have about 10,000 people who were vaccinated, but not 10,000 first doses,” Major Clarke told Barbados TODAY.

He again appealed to people to come out and be inoculated for their protection and that of their families and the country as a whole.

He said: “Today we would have done more on site, but the rain down in St Peter shut down play early; the flood warning shut down things down there early. That was going well up to about 2 o’clock when the rain came down; and because we are using the field, we had to shut it down because it started to get muddy.”

But the vaccination coordinator gave an assurance that the uptake of the vaccine was slowly picking back up.

Major Clarke said: “I think as people are seeing what is happening, it is slowly picking back up. But it has not got the momentum yet that we would like. The word is out there, but I think people are still cautious. My solution would be to continue doing what we are doing and people will come. I think once we provide the opportunities for people to come and people give more testimonials and they see what’s happening, you would get more people.

“But you see, the easy pickings have gone; the people who really wanted to get vaccinated have gone, it is the people who are now on the fence that we are working with.”

The private sector and trade unions have declared their backing to help boost the uptake in vaccines among their membership.

The largest public sector trade union has pledged to encourage its members to take the injection while at the same time declaring respect for their right to choose.

Acting General Secretary of the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) Wayne Walrond has said his organization supports mass awareness campaigns as well.

“We are all for public education to promote the vaccination, but we still respect the individual’s right to be vaccinated or not to be vaccinated. We can’t be part of any campaign to intimidate or bully workers to take the vaccination. We are not against sending out the message to promote the vaccination,” Walrond told Barbados TODAY.

President of the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU) Mary Redman declared her union’s full support for the national effort to increase the vaccine roll out.

Redman said she has been spreading the message during a series of appearances in various online fora particularly in recent times.

She said: “From the beginning we have been trying to encourage our membership generally and in more recent times since they have started the vaccination of students, we have been actively encouraging that students take up the vaccine; it’s the only way that we will get back to any normalcy in both the school and in the wider society.

“So we have been actively attempting to persuade while respecting choice. So we have been trying to do our part in persuading, with the recognition that it is a layered approach and vaccines along with the other protocols are our surest bet in trying to avoid infection, serious illness or death or trying to get some return to normalcy.”

She also pointed out that from early in the vaccination campaign, the uptake among teachers was good.

Chamber of Commerce president Anthony Branker disclosed that the business sector’s contribution to improving the vaccination numbers was an incentive scheme which has been proposed to Government’s new COVID Public Advisor David Ellis.

But Branker told Barbados TODAY he would prefer that Ellis speak on that proposal.

When contacted, Ellis said it would be premature of him to comment on the matter since it was still under consideration.

“I cannot at this stage speak to that directly because it is a matter that is under consideration,” Ellis told Barbados TODAY. “However, we are looking to get as much support that we can from the private sector individually and collectively as we aspire to the goal of getting to the point of at least 80 per cent of our population being fully vaccinated.”

The COVID Public Advisor said that at the same time, the authorities are not asking for the private sector’s support for the vaccination campaign alone.

“What we need to do is to bear in mind that vaccinated or not, we still have to abide by the protocols that are aimed at protecting people in this country. Our concern is that right across Barbados, there are too many people who are ignoring that fact and are becoming ill because they have ignored it.”

The recently retired journalist said his team was looking forward to working with the private sector in dealing with this matter.

“The surge is on and we recognize that, to a large extent, the die is already cast in many respects,” Ellis declared. “But we have to look not only at today, we have to look down the road at how we are going to protect ourselves from more loss of life and more illness and the pressure that that exerts upon this country’s health services.”

He said consideration must also be given to how the increasing numbers of deaths and illness would affect uninfected people who could be denied the kind of attention they deserved because the healthcare system is under pressure.

The death toll from the disease rose to 64 on Thursday when a 55-year-old Guyanese woman who was a resident here died in the primary isolation section at the Harrison’s Point coronavirus hospital.The unvaccinated woman had spent 22 days in acute care.

(emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb)