An­na-Lisa Paul

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has ad­mit­ted that the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple who have so far re­fused to be­come vac­ci­nat­ed against the COVID-19 virus, are from the Chris­t­ian faith.

Mak­ing the dis­clo­sure dur­ing the Min­istry of Health’s (MoH) me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day as he re­spond­ed to ques­tions, Deyals­ingh said, “When we talk to peo­ple and do our sur­veys, the bulk of peo­ple who seem to be vac­cine hes­i­tant are of the Chris­t­ian faith.”

Claim­ing he had been tak­en aback af­ter hear­ing a Chris­t­ian pas­tor on a ra­dio sta­tion dis­cour­ag­ing per­sons from be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed, the min­is­ter went on, “My fear is what is hap­pen­ing be­hind the scenes.”

He added, “With the way the Bible and the teach­ings of the Bible have been in­ter­pret­ed or mis­in­ter­pret­ed…there are many such pas­tors do­ing that both in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

In rec­og­niz­ing the vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy among the pop­u­la­tion, Deyals­ingh said the MOH had changed its com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy and now had a new slo­gan of “Don’t De­lay, Vac­ci­nate To­day.”

In late Au­gust, Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don urged peo­ple to stop lis­ten­ing to mis­in­for­ma­tion as he plead­ed with cit­i­zens to get vac­ci­nat­ed to save T&T from so­cial and eco­nom­ic ru­in.

He said, “I am ask­ing you please, please, please, please get vac­ci­nat­ed. There is spu­ri­ous in­for­ma­tion cir­cu­lat­ing that is stop­ping peo­ple from be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed.”

At the time, he ad­vised cit­i­zens to lis­ten to the ex­perts and to the sci­ence be­fore mak­ing their choice to vac­ci­nate.

He told them, “There is no sci­ence that says you will get a chip in your arm from Bill Gates, or that Chi­na will be able to track you. There is no sci­ence in that what­so­ev­er. We know that 99.3 per cent of peo­ple who have died from COVID-19 from May this year were un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple. That is the sci­ence. The undis­put­ed fact is un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple are dy­ing at a high­er rate than vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple. That is the fact, you can­not dis­pute the num­bers.”

Gor­don said peo­ple were not un­der­stand­ing the sci­ence and were trapped in Face­book al­go­rithms that bom­bard­ed them with mis­in­for­ma­tion.

For those who were con­fused, Arch­bish­op Gor­don urged them to fol­low the lead of their Church el­ders and get vac­ci­nat­ed.

Back then, he al­so slammed the­o­log­i­cal lead­ers who were against vac­ci­na­tions, be­liev­ing the blood of Je­sus would pro­tect them from COVID.