Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is tak­ing a hard line against un­vac­ci­nat­ed ado­les­cents as the new school term nears and has warned that the Gov­ern­ment may make vac­cines manda­to­ry for a re­turn to school.

“The Gov­ern­ment will have no dif­fi­cul­ty in­ter­ven­ing on the chil­dren’s be­half, as we’ve done with measles, with mumps, with oth­er as­pects of health care, where the chil­dren can­not make the de­ci­sion them­selves,” Row­ley said yes­ter­day.

The Prime Min­is­ter was speak­ing at the han­dover cer­e­mo­ny of the San Juan Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School. He said that by mid-Sep­tem­ber, if vac­ci­na­tions num­bers were still too low for herd im­mu­ni­ty among the 12 to 18 age group, then the Gov­ern­ment would act.

“If at the end of the pe­ri­od that we have set, which is mid-Sep­tem­ber, we look back on it and we see on­ly a pop­u­la­tion of vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents which is well be­low the herd im­mu­ni­ty lev­el of 60 or 70 per cent, then the Gov­ern­ment will have to act,” he said.

“So far, we’ve left it up to the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of par­ents to be rea­son­able, to be un­der­stand­ing, to be car­ing and to be re­spon­si­ble,” he added.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that this was not an easy de­ci­sion.

“We will not do this light­ly, but if we have to do that, we’d do it,” he said.

“So those who have a mil­lion and one rea­sons from Face­book to not get their chil­dren vac­ci­nat­ed, that is your right, but by the same to­ken, oth­er par­ents have rights for their chil­dren and the Gov­ern­ment has a right and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.” (See ed­i­to­r­i­al on page 12)

He said a “large part” of the group­ing, up­wards of 60 per cent, need­ed to be vac­ci­nat­ed or im­mune to the virus to make it dif­fi­cult for the virus to spread.

“We have vac­cines, so there­fore we are able to vac­ci­nate a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of our chil­dren and bring them out to school and have a good sci­en­tif­ic ba­sis to say that if these vac­ci­nat­ed chil­dren are out to school for face-to-face learn­ing, their ex­po­sure to the dam­age and dan­ger and death which the virus promis­es is not great,” he said.

“It is on that ba­sis that I am ask­ing par­ents to do your chil­dren the favour of get­ting them vac­ci­nat­ed to be pro­tect­ed not on­ly at home but in school and al­low them to come back to school.”

“I have heard all kinds of ex­cus­es as to why this is not a giv­en,” he added.

Row­ley said he knew there would be a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion that would not co­op­er­ate.

“And all I could say to that con­ver­sa­tion is that you could on­ly talk that kind of talk be­cause you are not in the po­si­tion of Ja­maica and Guade­loupe and Texas and Mis­sis­sip­pi and oth­ers,” he said.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, right and Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly, left unveils the plaque during the handing over ceremony for the newly constructed San Juan Government Primary School yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

He said Guade­loupe had to ask France for re­frig­er­at­ed con­tain­ers to store its dead.

“I guess when you in that sit­u­a­tion, you cant talk like how Trinida­di­ans talk­ing now, which is choos­ing which vac­cine and which one they not choos­ing and who you’re not sup­port­ing,” Row­ley said.

“That is a lux­u­ri­ous con­ver­sa­tion which we have now which we couldn’t dare have in Jan­u­ary, Feb­ru­ary or March.

“We main­tain that it is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of par­ents to look af­ter them­selves as adults and now sec­ond­ly, look af­ter their chil­dren as par­ents or guardians.

“To­day, this coun­try was prob­a­bly in the best po­si­tion it could be in, in a pan­dem­ic, which is we have large dos­es of vac­cines avail­able, we have an ac­tive med­ical com­mu­ni­ty, we have dif­fer­ent types of vac­cines avail­able and we have a lev­el of in­fec­tion which while not sat­is­fac­to­ry, is such that we could do a lot of what we do­ing now.”

He said that as much as 80 per cent of the econ­o­my was al­ready opened and with­out prop­er vac­ci­na­tion to stave off the worse ef­fects of the Delta vari­ant, we could be in “grave, grave dan­ger.”

“We are just a cou­ple weeks from Sep­tem­ber, we have not ad­ver­tised an open­ing date for face-to-face school­ing at this time but we are do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to put us in a po­si­tion to have chil­dren, at least that co­hort of the Form Four, Form Five, Form Six stu­dents come back to school as they used to,” he said.

He said the ob­jec­tive was to vac­ci­nate enough so the younger ones could al­so go back to school too.

“There is noth­ing that we do in this coun­try as a Gov­ern­ment, where you don’t find peo­ple try­ing to un­der­mine it so that it wouldn’t hap­pen and that brings us back to the chil­dren,” he said.

“The on­ly vac­cine that is avail­able and ap­proved by WHO for use on ju­ve­niles aged 13 and above is the Pfiz­er vac­cine and what we did was move heav­en and earth on our be­half and on be­half of Cari­com..to en­cour­age the Amer­i­cans to share their largesse with us.”

He added, “Our chil­dren have been home since last year March. Par­ents, get your chil­dren vac­ci­nat­ed if you want them to par­tic­i­pate in what they have not par­tic­i­pat­ed in for the last year and a half.

“A few months ago, the ad­vice was ‘get the vac­cines, that’s the on­ly way to re­spond to the threat of the pan­dem­ic and that was true, be­cause this Gov­ern­ment led by a sci­en­tist, takes a po­si­tion, that we would fol­low the sci­ence,” he said.