60 Corporate Area homeless persons get vaccinated

Mayor of Kingston Delroy Williams has indicated that some 60 homeless Jamaicans across the Corporate Area received their first dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday. 

Williams said that the shots were administered during an exercise to inoculate staff at the Marie Atkins Shelter as well as at the temporary shelter on Church Street in downtown Kingston.

He was speaking this morning during the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of indigent housing in the St Andrew West Central constituency.

There are an estimated 2,000 homeless people in Jamaica, with around 700 living in Kingston. 

The capital's downtown region accounts for about 500 of them.

Minister of Local Government, Desmond McKenzie, who was also at the ceremony, sought to assure that locating the homeless persons for their second dose, which will be due in eight to 12 weeks, will not pose a challenge.

“A lot of these people live on the streets but they have their faculties well in place, so it's not difficult to find them. Based on our feeding programme, especially in the Corporate Area, we do know where these people are and all the persons who were vaccinated yesterday [Thursday] were registered and some of them even have cell phones, so we can make contact with them,” McKenzie said.

He said the vaccination drive will be replicated across other parishes in the coming weeks and that once the timetable has been set, it will be made public.  

“We have the team of social workers from within the poor relief department out there reaching out to these persons and getting information as to those who are desirous of getting vaccinated,” McKenzie. 

Williams assured that the homeless feeding programme will continue on no movement days under the COVID curfew.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Thursday announced seven days of lockdown, commencing on August 22. 

For the period Sunday, August 22 to Tuesday, August 24; Sunday, August 29 to Tuesday, August 31; on and Sunday, September 5, Jamaicans will be required to remain indoors.

“We have never ever, during a lockdown, not fed and cared for the homeless,” Williams emphasised.

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