Sev­er­al fac­tors will have to be ad­dressed if Gov­ern­ment in­deed has to ex­am­ine mak­ing the COVID-19 vac­cine manda­to­ry by law, says Op­po­si­tion UNC sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al.

Lutch­me­di­al spoke yes­ter­day af­ter state­ments by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on a ra­dio pro­gramme host­ed by for­mer UNC MP Dr Bhoe Tewarie.

Row­ley was quot­ed as say­ing if a vari­ant of COVID-19 be­comes more vir­u­lent, then Gov­ern­ment would do what is nec­es­sary to pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion and, “We know through sci­en­tif­ic in­for­ma­tion that there is a vac­cine that could pre­vent that from hap­pen­ing then the Gov­ern­ment would have to take a de­ci­sion on be­half of those per­sons who have the right to pro­tect them­selves from this virus. So a de­ci­sion will have to be made.”

Row­ley said if the vol­un­tary sit­u­a­tion gives T&T the re­sults “we could live with, then we live with it be­ing vol­un­tary but some coun­tries have al­ready gone be­yond that.”

Row­ley said vac­ci­na­tion wasn’t an in­va­sion of rights.

How­ev­er, his com­ments im­me­di­ate­ly raised ap­pre­hen­sion with some peo­ple who have cit­ed an in­abil­i­ty to take the vac­cine due to their health con­di­tion among oth­er rea­sons.

Yes­ter­day, Lutch­me­di­al said, “We be­lieve that there is need for con­sul­ta­tion on this mat­ter and as I said on Mon­day, with the phased re­open­ing of cer­tain busi­ness­es start­ing on Mon­day, it’s dis­ap­point­ing that we have no idea what Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy or plan en­tails.

“I be­lieve every­one wants to op­er­ate as safe­ly as pos­si­ble and the Gov­ern­ment has to con­sid­er pro­tect­ing busi­ness own­ers from le­gal ac­tion, but al­so pro­tect em­ploy­ees from dis­crim­i­na­tion if, for ex­am­ple, they have not yet been vac­ci­nat­ed. Re­mem­ber, we are still rolling out vac­cines. I think the Health Min­is­ter said this lat­est ship­ment will take us to 60 per cent.”

She added, “If they are in­deed look­ing at mak­ing the vac­cine manda­to­ry by law, I think they must ad­dress the is­sue of tim­ing (as we have not vac­ci­nat­ed a sub­stan­tial por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion yet), the fact that vac­cines have on­ly re­ceived emer­gency use ap­proval and not full ap­proval, the ques­tion of boost­ers and their ne­ces­si­ty in the fu­ture and the fact that there is in­ter­fer­ence with fun­da­men­tal rights, so a leg­isla­tive mea­sure must pass the pro­por­tion­al­i­ty test.

“In­ter­fer­ence with in­di­vid­ual rights and free­doms is per­mis­si­ble of course, once it is rea­son­ably jus­ti­fi­able.”

Lutch­me­di­al added, “They must al­so ad­dress their minds to the pub­lic ser­vice and how they will im­ple­ment such a mea­sure. This is a con­ver­sa­tion that should have start­ed a long time ago.”

On a per­son­al note, Lutch­me­di­al said she sup­port­ed tak­ing the vac­cine, “as there is suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to show it re­duces the risk of se­vere ill­ness even if you con­tract the virus. I re­ceived my two dos­es and en­cour­age every­one to avail them­selves of the op­por­tu­ni­ty and dis­cuss their con­cerns with a doc­tor.”

—Gail Alexan­der