Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has sig­nalled that if sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of stu­dents are not vac­ci­nat­ed, Gov­ern­ment may well have to con­sid­er a par­al­lel ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, where some stu­dents are al­lowed to re­turn to in-per­son learn­ing and oth­ers will con­tin­ue on­line.

The lo­gis­tics of this will of ne­ces­si­ty have to be worked out.

It is no se­cret that the ad­vent of on­line learn­ing over the past year and a half has neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed thou­sands of chil­dren. Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has said over 2,000 chil­dren dropped out of school in the pe­ri­od due to their in­abil­i­ty to make the tran­si­tion for vary­ing rea­sons. Hope­ful­ly, these chil­dren will not be al­lowed to fall by the way­side and a way can be found to re­turn them to for­mal school­ing.

The im­pact on­line class­es have had on chil­dren in a broad­er sense must al­so be con­sid­ered by par­ents pon­der­ing whether to vac­ci­nate their chil­dren or not.

There is no deny­ing that the an­ti-vax mes­sage has struck a chord with some in T&T, con­tribut­ing to over­all hes­i­tan­cy.

Across the world and in the re­gion, how­ev­er, it is clear that those who do not vac­ci­nate are more sus­cep­ti­ble to get­ting the virus and the new glob­al mantra is that there is al­so a pan­dem­ic of the un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

The warn­ing from UWI Pro­fes­sor Har­i­ha­ran Seethara­man that this coun­try’s low vac­ci­na­tion rate could lead to the emer­gence of a new, lo­cal vari­ant must be wor­ry­ing to every cit­i­zen giv­en the dan­gers al­ready posed by the dead­ly Delta vari­ant.

Yes­ter­day, CARPHA al­so re­leased a study that showed a sig­nif­i­cant link be­tween ed­u­ca­tion lev­els and vac­cine ac­cep­tance. Ac­cord­ing to CARPHA, those who were less ed­u­cat­ed about COVID-19 were most like­ly to have con­cerns and dis­play hes­i­tan­cy. Top con­cerns of the hes­i­tant in­clude pos­si­ble side ef­fects, how quick­ly the vac­cines were de­vel­oped and a gen­er­al lack of in­for­ma­tion about the vac­cines. The ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple with less than a pri­ma­ry school ed­u­ca­tion were more in­clined to be­lieve the vac­cine would not pro­tect them against the virus. The study found they got their in­for­ma­tion from friends, fam­i­ly, or tele­vi­sion, while those with uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion grav­i­tat­ed to the WHO and oth­er pub­lic health or­gan­i­sa­tions for in­for­ma­tion.

What is in­ter­est­ing is that the sur­vey did not speak to the im­pact of mis­in­for­ma­tion from so­cial me­dia on hes­i­tan­cy. This un­sci­en­tif­ic sur­vey has high­light­ed that there is a lot of work to be done to ed­u­cate the pub­lic and par­tic­u­lar­ly the hes­i­tant about the vac­cines.

What is need­ed is a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign that ad­dress­es the con­cerns iden­ti­fied in the CARPHA study. If this coun­try is to win this war against this dead­ly virus, then it is in­cum­bent on the au­thor­i­ties to change their mes­sag­ing. There is a need to start a me­dia blitz much like what hap­pens dur­ing elec­tions where the pub­lic is bom­bard­ed with mes­sages on ra­dio, tele­vi­sion, the dai­ly news­pa­pers, mi­cro­phones and what­ev­er oth­er means reg­u­lar­ly, in­form­ing cit­i­zens of the ef­fi­ca­cy of the vac­cines to al­lay all fears.

This coun­try can­not af­ford to lose this war, but we al­so can­not al­low our chil­dren’s ed­u­ca­tion to suf­fer ei­ther.