There is optimism that the National Vaccination Programme could reach its target of vaccinating 75 to 80 per cent of the country’s eligible population before the end of the year.
It has been expressed by the programme’s co-coordinator Major David Clarke, who said the numbers were slowly but surely inching towards that goal set by Prime Minister Mia Mottley late last year.
Major Clarke told Barbados TODAY that to date, around 70 per cent of the eligible population had been inoculated against COVID-19.
However, he said they are working on an initiative which he believes will bolster those figures by at least 10 per cent.
“Right now we’re at 70 per cent of the eligible population and certainly we are slowly ticking over every day. I think that we will slowly get there…People are coming every day but in small numbers, but I think we will reach it this year.
“We are just about to roll out a strategy with the Ministry of Education and I think that once we do that, because we’re at 50 per cent of the young people between 12 to 18, and I think that once we roll out that strategy we will probably get another 10 per cent,” Major Clarke told Barbados TODAY during a telephone interview.
According to Wednesday’s statistics 160 288 persons have received at least the first dose while 149 692 people are fully vaccinated. That represents 55.2 per cent of the entire population and 70.2 per cent of the eligible population.
In November last year, with the island slowly recovering from the devastating impact of the Delta variant, Prime Minister Mottley promised that if 75 to 80 per cent of the eligible population was fully vaccinated all restrictions would eventually be lifted.
“I think when we reach closer to that ultimate threshold, whether that threshold is 75 per cent or 80 per cent of the eligible population, I’m waiting to find out, but that is when we would like to remove the restrictions completely,” the Prime Minister said from Brussels, Belgium, where she was attending the COP26 Summit.
Major Clarke also reported success with the booster shots, disclosing that Barbadians were continuing to come forward for the third shot.
“We are now at 45 000 boosters, which is about 20 per cent of where we are at, so we’re getting there slowly. The boosters are going reasonably well so we will get there,” he said.
(RB)