Vaccine blues in St Andrew West Rural

St Andrew West Rural Member of Parliament Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn has described the COVID-19 vaccination take-up in her constituency as disappointing – a snapshot of the limping inoculation campaign that has left Jamaica second from bottom, in per-capita compliance, among its Caribbean neighbours.

That concern is even graver for Cuthbert-Flynn because she is also state minister of health.

The second-term parliamentarian is, however, hopeful that vaccine take-up will improve despite high levels of hesitancy, as well as aggressive pushback from anti-vaxxer lobbyists.

A number of vaccination blitzes were held last year in the sprawling, mountainous constituency, particularly in Red Hills, Stony Hill, and Lawrence Tavern.

The HEART Academy in Stony Hill is also a permanent vaccination site.

“Initially when we started, we had a really good take-up. We had about 700 people one day, 600 people another day, and the blitz went well, too,” Cuthbert-Flynn told The Gleaner at a handover ceremony at Rock Hall Primary School, which was gifted a printer by the Usain Bolt Foundation.

“With the number of people that we have in West Rural St Andrew, I’m not pleased with the take-up at all, especially with a permanent site being in the constituency.”

St Andrew West Rural has more than 39,100 listed voters, not counting ineligible children and perhaps hundreds of unregistered adults.

The lawmaker said she continues to use town criers to get the word out about the importance of vaccination. That advocacy has heightened with the onrushing fourth wave of COVID-19, which epidemiologists believe is fuelled by the emerging Omicron variant, which is more than twice as highly transmissible as its precursor, Delta.

Approximately 20 per cent of the Jamaican population is fully vaccinated.

“It’s really up to the people to come out and say that they want the vaccine. We want our children back in school, and I think parents need to understand that the responsibility lies on them to take the vaccine in order to protect the children even better at home,” Cuthbert-Flynn said.

Four vaccines are available in Jamaica – Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, and Pfizer. Only Pfizer has been cleared for children.

Although some countries have expanded their COVID-19 vaccination programmes to include children five to 11 years old, the state minister for health said the ministry was awaiting that call from Chief Medical Officer Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie “and other medical professionals here in Jamaica”.

Meanwhile, Cuthbert-Flynn reasoned that though vaccination activities were paused to observe the Christmas and Boxing Day holidays, “take-up was not very good” for the rest of the festive season.

At the site in Stony Hill, between 40 and 100 people were vaccinated each day.

According to the health ministry’s vaccination tracker, which was last updated on December 29, 2021, a total of 1,215,081 COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered.

Of that number, 638,690 were first doses, 495,058 were second shots, and 75,743 were single doses.

Some 4,477 people have received booster shots, while third doses have been administered to 1,114 immunocompromised persons.

With COVID-19 deaths inching closer to 2,500, Cuthbert-Flynn is urging Jamaicans to act responsibly and refrain from being selfish.

“The older persons are the ones that we are killing off, because we have been selfish and not wanting to take the vaccine. Then we party, or engage in risky behaviours, and take home the virus to someone elderly or someone with comorbidities,” she lamented.

judana.murphy@gleanerjm.com