Pop-up clinic targets seniors for vaccination

The Ministry of Health, with the support of BARP, held a Pop-Up Clinic on Saturday to target senior Barbadians who have not been able to receive their first shot of COVID-19 vaccine, and also those 70 and over seeking to get their booster shots.

BARP President Marilyn Rice-Bowen, with Rice-Bowen said her association intenda to do all that it can to help protect the older members of the population who have been predominantly affected by the virus so far.

“While it’s important to encourage our seniors to be vaccinated, a cursory glance at our figures on a regular basis reveals that quite a number of our seniors are dying from COVID, and whenever you look right after the age group, it says unvaccinated. That of course concerned BARP, so we decided to host a pop-up clinic catering to the seniors.

“As seniors we are fighting back, and that is important – we have decided not to lay back and say well we have reached this age … regardless of our age we are fighting back,” she said.

Though she admitted that the current curfew time of 9 pm at night was not a cause of concern to most seniors,  Rice-Bowen once again encouraged older Barbadians to limit their movements during the day to help reduce their chances of being exposed to the virus.

“What we are encouraging them to do is to decrease their movement. So if you know you are going to the post office, that day you are going [there], go to the grocery, do everything so that rather than you being on the streets three or four days, see if you can bring it down to one day.

“We are seniors, if we want to play our part in reducing the numbers, we should play our part by looking to decrease our movement as seniors.” (SB)