KINGSTON – Jamaica named an eight-member National COVID-19 Vaccination Operationalisation Task Force (NCVOTF) as the country continues to deal with the impact of the coronavirus.
The NCVOTF will be chaired by Professor Gordon Shirley, and Prime Minister Andrew Holness said it had been established “to liaise with the Ministry of Health and Wellness and the private sector, to scale up and streamline both the public and private sector managed aspects of the National Vaccination Programme to make it more efficient, seamless and accessible for Jamaicans”.
Holness said the task force also includes Dr Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie, chief medical officer in the Ministry of Health and Wellness; Professor Lloyd Waller, transformation policy and governance at the University of the West Indies (UWI); and Peter Melhado, the president and chief executive officer of ICD Group, and held its first meeting last Friday.
The government wants to vaccinate more than 1.6 million Jamaicans by next March to achieve herd immunity and curb the spread of the pandemic.
In its latest bulletin, the Ministry of Health and Wellness reported the island now has recorded 73,496 positive cases and 1,666 deaths because of the virus since March last year.
It said the new cases included 414 females and all the cases ranged in ages from three days to 101 years.
The ministry said the ages of those who succumbed to the virus were between 51 and 83 and included nine males.
Jamaica has 22,225 active cases after 90 people recovered from the virus, bringing the total number of recoveries to 49,135.
Currently, 786 people are hospitalised, 122 of which are severely ill, while 50 are critically ill and 158 are moderately ill.
(CMC)
