SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

If 70 per cent of To­bag­o­ni­ans get vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19, the is­land’s beach­es may be re­opened, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis has said.

Speak­ing on Tues­day at the Mag­dale­na Grand Re­sort af­ter an an­nounce­ment that a 200-room Mar­riott ho­tel would be built on the is­land, Den­nis said, “If we can get to a point of vac­ci­nat­ing maybe 70 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, there might be some pos­si­bil­i­ty for us to en­joy the re­open­ing of the beach­es and a re­turn of more mean­ing­ful do­mes­tic tourism,” Den­nis said.

He said hote­liers were able to “breathe” in the midst of the pan­dem­ic when do­mes­tic tourism was al­lowed be­fore this lat­est lock­down.

Den­nis said the Gov­ern­ment was do­ing its part to con­tin­ue to sup­port hote­liers. He said the hote­liers are al­so ex­pect­ed to make se­ri­ous ef­forts to sur­vive the cur­rent eco­nom­ic hard­ships brought on by the pan­dem­ic.

“We must un­der­stand that in or­der for us to re­turn to some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy, it de­pends on the safe­ty that is guar­an­teed in do­ing so, and based on the in­for­ma­tion that is avail­able to me, that safe­ty can on­ly be guar­an­teed through vac­ci­na­tion,” Den­nis said.

Asked about is­sues raised by some hote­liers about not be­ing able to ac­cess Gov­ern­ment grants, Den­nis said in sev­er­al cas­es, those busi­ness­es did not qual­i­fy. He said some busi­ness­peo­ple had not been pay­ing their tax­es or mak­ing Na­tion­al In­sur­ance (NIS) pay­ments for their em­ploy­ees.

Den­nis said is­sues re­lat­ed to re­open­ing ac­tiv­i­ty are not unique to T&T.

“Gov­ern­ments all over the world are grap­pling with this and that is why you will find a num­ber of them have turned to dras­tic mea­sures, mak­ing vac­ci­na­tions manda­to­ry be­cause again, based on the in­for­ma­tion avail­able to me, it is the on­ly way for us to re­turn to some lev­el of nor­mal­cy.”

THA Chief Secretary Ancil Dennis

THA INFO DEPT

Asked if his com­ment about beach­es re­open­ing came af­ter dis­cus­sions with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Den­nis said he was not will­ing to dis­cuss the de­tails of those con­ver­sa­tions. He said the Prime Min­is­ter gave a com­mit­ment to re­open­ing some sec­tors at the end of Sep­tem­ber based on vac­ci­na­tion rates.

“I am sim­ply say­ing that if you want the beach­es to re­open, vac­ci­na­tion will be the way to get to that point. Feb­ru­ary 2022 soon come and maybe we have to vac­ci­nate in or­der to gy­rate when that time comes,” Den­nis said.

Mean­while, Health Sec­re­tary Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine said she was dis­ap­point­ed in the low vac­ci­na­tion rate on the is­land.

David­son-Ce­les­tine said giv­en To­ba­go’s small adult pop­u­la­tion, the is­land should have been able to cross the thresh­old for herd im­mu­ni­ty al­ready.

She said the THA has tried to ed­u­cate To­bag­o­ni­ans on the ben­e­fits of tak­ing the vac­cine.

“We are us­ing our com­mu­ni­ca­tion ap­proach­es to get the mes­sage across and of course to use the in­flu­encers, the church­men, the lead­ers in the church, to en­cour­age their fol­low­ers to get vac­ci­nat­ed,” she said.

David­son-Ce­les­tine said the is­land’s med­ical fa­cil­i­ties can­not cope with an in­crease of cas­es, as there was lim­it­ed med­ical staff. She said of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Health have been vis­it­ing To­ba­go con­sis­tent­ly to en­sure their sys­tems are ro­bust enough to han­dle the cas­es. 

She said so far, To­ba­go has re­ceived $100 mil­lion in COVID-19 sup­port from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

“The first $50 mil­lion was spent in a num­ber of ways: to bring our sys­tems up to date, to pay our sup­pli­ers so we can en­sure that our sys­tems are as flu­id as much as pos­si­ble and al­so to treat with gra­tu­ity for the staff be­cause you have to treat with lev­els of mo­ti­va­tion, be­cause we are in this for the long haul,” she said.

David­son-Ce­les­tine said sev­er­al weeks ago, the THA re­ceived an­oth­er $50 mil­lion to as­sist To­bag­o­ni­ans with rental as­sis­tance grants, food and to en­sure sup­pli­ers were paid.

She said she be­lieves the Delta vari­ant of the virus could al­ready be in To­ba­go and urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

David­son-Ce­les­tine said there were “one or two” cas­es on the is­land of ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple dy­ing from the virus but she be­lieves pre-ex­ist­ing con­di­tions caused their deaths.

“For in­stance, if some­one has COVID and that per­son is ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and that per­son has heart chal­lenges or kid­ney chal­lenges, that per­son is like­ly to die, es­pe­cial­ly if the per­son comes down from a stroke. In such a cir­cum­stance, the vac­cine would not pro­tect that per­son from death be­cause the ma­jor fac­tor is the kid­ney or the heart con­di­tion that that per­son has,” she said.