Executive director of the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) Dr Joy St John has cited vaccine hesitancy among obstacles preventing CARPHA member countries from reaching the desired herd immunity from COVID-19.
She said the region was nowhere near where it should be in terms of the desired vaccinated numbers per capita, and called for effective communication campaigns to persuade people to take the jab.
Speaking as a panellist on a Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) webinar on Thursday that included hoteliers from Barbados and other Caribbean countries, St John said all of the variants of concern were already in the region – Alpha, Gamma, Delta and others that had not been heard about but which had been the cause of significant COVID-19 outbreaks in CARPHA member states.
“We still have quite a bit of work to do to reach herd immunity. It is not just the challenge of not having lots of vaccines coming to the region, but there is vaccine hesitancy,” she said. (GC)
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