The health ben­e­fits of get­ting the COVID-19 vac­cine may not be suf­fi­cient to con­vince some mem­bers of the pub­lic to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

That is why one lo­cal busi­ness has found a cre­ative ap­proach that may help the coun­try move a step clos­er to achiev­ing herd im­mu­ni­ty.

Much like how busi­ness­es in the Unit­ed States have of­fered free taxi rides to those on their way to get vac­ci­nat­ed, dis­count­ed pur­chas­es and even free meals right af­ter peo­ple have got their jabs, St Christo­pher’s Ser­vice Sta­tion is fol­low­ing suit.

If you thought that it can­not get bet­ter than sink­ing your teeth in­to pre-pack­aged dou­bles dur­ing the lock­down, then imag­ine pay­ing half the price.

It is an of­fer by St Christo­pher’s (Ser­vice Sta­tion) to any­one who re­ceived their COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion and ac­cord­ing to Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Robert Mo­hammed, the dis­counts are ap­plic­a­ble on most items across the store, in­clud­ing gas.

“ We are say­ing to you come to St Christo­pher with your im­mu­niza­tion card and whether you get 1 jab or 2 jab and we will give you a loy­al­ty card that gives you 20 points and you can buy any­thing in the store for 20 points.”

Since the gov­ern­ment’s roll­out of its covid 19 vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme on April 6 over 1,200 peo­ple have been ful­ly in­oc­u­lat­ed, while over 70,000 have re­ceived their first jab.

To en­sure en­thu­si­asm in the vac­cine does not plateau, the ser­vice sta­tion’s gen­er­al man­ag­er has adopt­ed an in­cen­tivized strat­e­gy to help get the coun­try across the fin­ish line.

“ We’ve been through it, this is the sec­ond wave and the on­ly way we can re­al­ly get through this is to vac­ci­nate as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble.”

Mo­hammed en­cour­aged oth­er busi­ness­es to adopt the strat­e­gy which has been im­ple­ment­ed in parts of the US.

Psy­chi­a­trist Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh ex­plained that en­cour­ag­ing seg­ments of so­ci­ety to­wards be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed may de­ter­mine whether herd im­mu­ni­ty is achieved soon­er or lat­er.

“There is a sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion this will ap­peal to, it’s a mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tor and I’m think­ing we may have no choice but to of­fer these in­cen­tives, even a cash in­cen­tive. The gov­ern­ment has to use every­thing in its ar­se­nal to al­low peo­ple’s minds to be changed.”

Dr Deyals­ingh said the in­duce­ment strat­e­gy could even help to avert the col­lapse of the coun­try’s par­al­lel health care sys­tem.