Busi­ness lead­ers have called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and his Gov­ern­ment to take ac­tion and even in­sti­tute manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tions for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers as a re­sponse to the ris­ing COVID-19 cas­es and deaths in the coun­try.

Fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s ad­dress to the na­tion on Thurs­day evening, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce is call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to act now in re­sponse to the wave of COVID-19 in­fec­tions and deaths.

The Cham­ber, in a press re­lease, said, “While the gov­ern­ment has sent a mes­sage that, in time, some ac­tion will be tak­en, we be­lieve the coun­try can­not wait to take the ac­tions re­quired, as this could re­sult in hun­dreds more of our cit­i­zens suc­cumb­ing to the pan­dem­ic. We must act now to save lives.”

It called on the gov­ern­ment to take vis­i­ble lead­er­ship on the next phase of deal­ing with COVID-19, say­ing that the state is the sin­gle largest em­ploy­er in the coun­try and can­not con­tin­ue to ab­di­cate the is­sue of vac­ci­na­tion in the work­place, sole­ly to the pri­vate sec­tor.

“We are com­fort­ed by what ap­pears to be a re­al­iza­tion that fur­ther lock­downs should not be the course of ac­tion pur­sued...We ask that any ac­tions be di­rect­ed at the un­vac­ci­nat­ed to en­cour­age vac­ci­na­tion and to pro­tect those who le­git­i­mate­ly can­not be vac­ci­nat­ed,” the cham­ber’s re­lease said.

The Cham­ber al­so called on the gov­ern­ment to ad­dress the is­sue of cit­i­zens ac­cess­ing ser­vices and said it should be moved to dig­i­tal ac­cess.

Mean­while, the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go said it agrees that should vac­ci­na­tion rates fail to in­crease, the gov­ern­ment may have to im­ple­ment new mea­sures to en­sure in­creased lev­els of vac­ci­na­tion.

“We are sup­port­ive of any ac­tions by the State to adopt and pub­lish a pol­i­cy which makes it clear­ly per­mis­si­ble for an em­ploy­er to im­ple­ment a manda­to­ry COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy, sup­port­ed by a clear process, with rea­son­able ex­cep­tions and sub­ject to the con­duct of risk as­sess­ment,” AM­CHAM’s re­lease said.

“The con­se­quences of in­ac­tion far out­weigh the risk of some ac­tion,” it added.

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion Gre­go­ry Aboud be­lieved Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley made an im­por­tant in­ter­ven­tion at a crit­i­cal time on Thurs­day night.

“The Prime Min­is­ter, in our opin­ion, set the right tone, gave the coun­try the right warn­ing and has put us on no­tice that more se­ri­ous times may be ahead,” Aboud said.

Asked if he be­lieved the Prime Min­is­ter was build­ing a foun­da­tion for the pos­si­ble im­ple­men­ta­tion of vac­cine man­dates, he said there may be a need for such ac­tion.

He said the gov­ern­ment’s elas­tic­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty is com­ing to an end.

“He seems re­luc­tant. Many peo­ple don’t want to cre­ate a di­vi­sion in so­ci­ety that will harm us more great­ly than the COVID virus, but, at the same time, this is life and death. This is about sav­ing lives and the Prime Min­is­ter has fired a shot across the bow about that and oth­er mea­sures that may be need­ed,” Aboud said.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists weigh in

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Win­ford James was al­so full of praise for Dr Row­ley’s ad­dress.

He said the speech was very good and well pre­pared.

“I thought it was a com­pre­hen­sive speech that went back to the be­gin­ning and put Trinidad and To­ba­go in the con­text of the world—ac­tu­al­ly com­par­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go—its in­ter­ven­tions—n re­la­tion to COVID-19. I think he did a very good job,” Dr James said.

The po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist be­lieved Dr Row­ley found a suit­able sober tone that, in his opin­ion, of­fered re­as­sur­ance even to his de­trac­tors.

He did, how­ev­er, say that he thought the Prime Min­is­ter would go a bit fur­ther than mere­ly re­cap­ping.

An­oth­er po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath be­lieved peo­ple were ex­pect­ing the Prime Min­is­ter to be much more de­ci­sive in adopt­ing poli­cies, based on our cri­sis.

“No di­rect mea­sure was in­sti­tut­ed and hence, we sim­ply have to wait and see when the Prime Min­is­ter will change the tide. Will this be de­ter­mined - and I’m a po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist - by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Elec­tions, which are due in two weeks?” Dr Ra­goonath said.

Dr Ra­goonath be­lieved it would have been po­lit­i­cal­ly dis­as­trous for the gov­ern­ment to in­sti­tute any lock­downs, or sim­i­lar ac­tions, so soon af­ter it pre­ma­ture­ly end­ed the State of Emer­gency.

Epi­demi­ol­o­gist - New strate­gies need­ed

Trinida­di­an-born epi­demi­ol­o­gist Dr Far­ley Cleghron be­lieves that, based on the rate of COVID-19 in­fec­tions and vac­ci­na­tion up­take in T&T, new strate­gies are need­ed for peo­ple who are re­sist­ing in­oc­u­la­tion.

The pub­lic health diplo­mat in Wash­ing­ton DC said while en­cour­ag­ing vac­ci­na­tions through in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the gov­ern­ment and pub­lic health ex­perts work, there is a lim­it to the ef­fec­tive­ness of that ap­proach.

“We can’t seem to get be­yond 50% and if you look at the peo­ple who got their first dose on­ly, it’s a very small num­ber of peo­ple. Es­sen­tial­ly, the de­mand has dried up,” Dr Cleghorn said.

“If you look at the num­bers (of COVID-19 cas­es), does it show any sign of slow­ing right now? It does not….That means you have to do very spe­cif­ic and over­lap­ping things to get your vac­cine rate up. The two strate­gies, as far as we know, work to re­duce trans­mis­sion and im­pact—death and dis­abil­i­ty - the pri­ma­ry one is vac­ci­na­tion and the sec­ond strat­e­gy is mit­i­ga­tion.”

Dr Cleghorn said in­cen­tives and dis­in­cen­tives can be used to in­crease vac­ci­na­tion rates.

While in­cen­tives are known, he ex­plained how dis­in­cen­tives work.

“Sin­ga­pore has said, for ex­am­ple, come Feb­ru­ary, if you are un­vac­ci­nat­ed and you show up ill in hos­pi­tal, they will not re­im­burse that hos­pi­tal for your health­care cost,” Dr Cleghorn said.

Dr Cleghorn said the gov­ern­ment has full pow­er with­in pub­lic health law to make vac­ci­na­tions manda­to­ry.

“Ex­ist­ing law en­ables the gov­ern­ment to do what is nec­es­sary in an emer­gency and out­side of an emer­gency. A State of Emer­gency is eas­i­er to do man­dates, but just reg­u­lar pub­lic health law and the au­thor­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment every­where, you can man­date vac­cines. Trinida­di­ans al­ready live un­der vac­cine man­dates,” he said.