Call to counter vaccine hesitancy in the Caribbean

SKEPTICISM SURROUNDING INOCULATION IS DRIVING THE SURGE OF COVID
INFECTIONS in St Maarten said Mr. Omar Ottley, that country’s Minister of Health, Social
Development and Labour in a recent exclusive with www.aroundtheregions.com.
“There is a number of people who do not believe in the vaccination. What we have seen in the
past month, is that all hospitalisation has been (among) persons who have not been vaccinated,”
Minister Ottley said.
Otley said St Maarten, among the most multicultural of all Caribbean Islands, inhabited by some
100 nationalities co-existing peacefully, has “an amazing vaccination programme” but it is
snubbed by stubborn hesitancy among sections of that Caribbean population.
He said Guyana and other regional territories have to implement aggressive inoculation
programmes to help reverse their COVID infection rates.
So far, close to 500 Guyanese have already died since the 2019 outbreak of the highly contagious
virus first detected in Wuhan, China. More than 4 million persons have so far died globally from
the disease.
Ottley said very early in the global spread his country adopted tough measures to limit the spread
among its 40, 700 diverse population. He linked their current success to those initial decisions
and said Guyana can emulate those measures.
“You have to know your culture: so, we scaled back the club hours (and) the restaurants hours.
My advice to countries is, ‘don’t do one without the other’. Don’t lock down without the increase
in testing and vaccination. Don’t scale back without a reason. Everything has to have a reason,”
the Health Minister counselled.

“Right now, we (have reverted) to the 11 pm curfew, but with the scale back comes increases in
the vaccination numbers…it has to go hand in hand,” the St Maarten government official
explained.
The health minister is not surprised by the expected push back from nationals noting that their
resistance was much sharper when they commenced the energetic inoculation exercise when
there were only 10 reported COVID cases.
“Yes, there has been some resistance to the vaccination…this is because when we started, we
were at ten cases, so many were of the view that COVID didn’t exist”.
The St Maarten minister suggested that Guyana and other countries find creative and innovative
ways in getting the public to buy-in on the importance of taking the jab.
“The increased number of positive persons will see more people coming forward to take
their vaccines and this has been a model that has worked in St Marteen. There is a
significant number of interests in the vaccines from the public as a result of the third
COVID wave,” the Health Minister declared.