NATION AT WAR: Insist on tourist vaccination, tap surplus to fight COVID, says Golding

Prime Minister Andrew Holness has been charged by Opposition Leader Mark Golding to take control of a spiralling coronavirus outbreak that has brought a summer of “deep crisis of death and despair”, invoking morbid imagery of a nation at war.

Golding criticised border-control measures as “ineffective” and called for vaccination of all travellers to Jamaica.

Any notion of mandatory vaccination for tourists is likely to face pushback from industry players who are trying to resuscitate a sector that is a major source of foreign-currency inflows into the island.

Claiming that quarantine rules were not being properly monitored for compliance, Golding advocated for COVID-19 testing upon arrival with rigorous checks by healthcare monitors.

“With our healthcare system crumbling, it is time to insist that all visitors to our shores are vaccinated. We have to protect our citizens and our country as we fight to get out of this crisis,” Golding said in an address to the nation Tuesday night.

Golding urged the Government to tap a budget surplus of more than $9 billion for the April-June quarter of the current fiscal year to bolster under-resourced hospitals gasping under the caseload of coronavirus cases.

The opposition leader called for the importation of oxygen generators on an emergency basis to cope with the respiratory woes induced by the virus.

“A high-level public/private sector committee should be tasked with governance of the procurement of oxygen supplies and the logistics of oxygen delivery, with a clear mandate to plan ahead to ensure that we never again run short of oxygen in our hospitals,” he said.

He called for the broadening of the category of workers tasked with administering the jab to include private medical facilities. Enlarging the army of vaxxers is crucial to Jamaica achieving 65 per cent herd immunity by March 2022, although the Pan American Health Organization has hinted that upwards of 80 per cent might be required to effectively stave off the virus.

Golding lobbied for more community sites to be co-opted in the dispensation of COVID-19 shots and urged the Government to expedite its deployment of mobile vaccination teams to remote communities whose residents might be daunted by transportation costs.

He also recommended that each parish have a designated facility for the care of healthcare workers who fall ill on the front line of the raging pandemic.

That comment appeared to hint at the disquiet among some nurses about the death of a COVID-19-infected nurse in Manchester three weeks ago, which sparked rumbling because she had problems sourcing a ventilator.

“If we fail to act now, we risk sombre and terrifying days ahead. More than ever, we must be vigilant to stop the spread of the virus,” Golding said.

Meanwhile, principal of Yallahs High School, Mark Malabver, has voiced concerns about the proposed resumption of face-to-face classes when 65 per cent of school populations have been inoculated.

Education Minister Fayval Williams had initially told a press conference that children who are fully vaccinated would be allowed to return to classrooms, while the unvaccinated would receive instruction online.

However, a subsequent statement set the two-thirds vaccination bar for physical learning in secondary schools.

“[This] places those students and parents who have been proactive to get vaccinated at a significant disadvantage because they will continue to suffer because there is a significant group of persons who have decided to not take the vaccine for whatever reasons,” Malaver said, adding that many parents have been influenced by anti-vaxxer campaigners while some had vaccine hesitancy.

The St Thomas principal noted that his school, along with others in the parish, is also at a major disadvantage as access to the vaccination is limited.

“Morant Bay Health Centre is the only health centre that is open on a consistent basis to serve the entire St Thomas and the parish has a lot of remote locations in which many of our students come from, so we are at the bottom of the pile in that regard,” Malabver told The Gleaner on Tuesday.

He believes that the ministry should set a hard deadline for the restart of in-person classes for the vaccinated.

Malabver also recommended that the ministry organise vaccination blitzes at various schools in order to support the immunisation drive.

In a virtual town-hall meeting held on Tuesday, Williams shared that so far, some 37,285 students have received at least one jab.

She said that while the ministry still hoped to resume face-to-face classes for secondary students by mid-October, it continues to be guided by the Ministry of Health & Wellness.

“We cannot begin school in the face-to-face mode. We have to remain in the remote mode, have lessons via television and radio, and we still have to have the distribution of our learning books and worksheets as students are asked to be in communication with their teacher,” said Williams.

Shanna Monteith contributed to this story