‘Give to get’: Bajans to be invited to donate for more jabs

Barbadians are to be asked to donate funds for the country to import more vaccines against the COVID-19 virus, the Prime Minister told the nation Thursday night.

While the first batch of tens of thousands of doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine from India was free, it will cost the government dearly to acquire other consignments, Mia Mottley said.

As Government expects an additional large shipment to arrive here shortly, Prime Minister Mottley announced the pending launch of a vaccine fund to which Barbadians will be asked to contribute to help defray the cost. She was referring to the first batch from a total of 100,800 doses, allocated to Barbados under the global COVAX initiative to finance vaccines for low and middle-income nations.

She said: “I truly believe that a national vaccine campaign will help us turn the corner. Tonight is not the night for me to speak of the details of a national vaccine fund that we will launch very shortly to help us pay for the vaccines when they come…because they will come at a high cost.

“We were fortunate that this first 100,000 were free and therefore it would be unethical for us to have charged anyone. Barbados is that place where we educate each other at tertiary level without charging fees because all of us commit to take the most vulnerable among us and the weakest among us on the journey.

“Similarly in this vaccine journey we are not charging people, but we will be appealing to people to donate to the national vaccine fund at individual levels and at corporate levels…because your Government is under stress, but we are not going to change who we are because as you heard me say over and over, principles only mean something when it is inconvenient to stand by them.”

She said that up to Thursday night, more than 29,000 people had been inoculated declaring the vaccination of 14 per cent of the country in two weeks an amazing achievement.

On Thursday, a daily record of 3,000 vaccinations was reached, the Prime Minister disclosed.

She said: “There is also a group of doctors who I also want to salute because as of next week we expect them to be going into communities in the homes to be able to do the vaccinations to persons who are either too ill to travel, too ill to take the risk or immobile and therefore remaining home. We are literally planning to ensure they have the appropriate equipment and the training they need to participate in the Shape App or any other software programmes that are critical to measure how we perform.

“By the weekend, we will be in home stretch for the administration of this first order of vaccines.”

The Prime Minister sought to assure Barbadians that once the next shipment of vaccines touches down here, vaccines will be available to everyone who wants them. Batches of the COVAX  shipment are due to arrive between next week and June, covering a fifth of the population.

Vaccination will not be mandatory but Mottley put residents on notice that at some point in the near future, they will be required to be inoculated in order to travel to some countries.

Mottley went further to point out that anyone going to Australia would be denied entry if they did not have the COVID-19 vaccine.

“The vaccination of Barbadians is a central plank for the full reopening of the national economy so that all Barbadians can eat, work and live with dignity,” she stated.

She also said that an increasing number of police officers are coming forward to be inoculated to such an extent that a special session has had to be set aside for them.

“We know that the major way out of this pandemic is through vaccination,” said the PM.

(emmmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb)