De­spite the surge in in­fec­tions and deaths over the past few weeks, there seemed to be a poor turnout of peo­ple seek­ing vac­cines at the mass vac­ci­na­tion site at the South­ern Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) in San Fer­nan­do Mon­day. There was just a hand­ful of peo­ple wait­ing for their first, sec­ond and third shot un­der two of the tents.

Eliz­a­beth Balkiss­son and her two sons, ages 13 and 15, of La Ro­maine were among the few who turned up for their first dose. She said they did not take the vac­cine be­fore be­cause they were not “re­al­ly go­ing any­where.”

But, she ex­plained that she de­cid­ed to take the vac­cine be­cause “things are get­ting very se­ri­ous all over the place and to be safer.” She ad­mit­ted that she was con­cerned about her chil­dren ex­pe­ri­enc­ing side ef­fects.

“But, I have faith every­thing will work out,” she added. An­oth­er par­ent, Im­ti­az Easa­hak, brought his daugh­ter, who re­cent­ly turned 12, to get her sec­ond dose of Pfiz­er.

En­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed, he said, “I think it is in our best in­ter­est for our kids to get vac­ci­nat­ed when they turn 12. I think that is a plus. Even though the kids are not show­ing a lot of symp­toms, at least you feel a sense of pro­tec­tion that they get it. It is bet­ter to get it than not to get it.”

With re­gards to all stu­dents re­turn­ing to school, he said the coun­try is caught be­tween a rock and a hard place.

“Our econ­o­my has to con­tin­ue to work and to pros­per, our kids need to be ed­u­cat­ed. We are all caught up in this world should we restart, should we not restart. It is not an easy de­ci­sion to make.” But, he be­lieves phys­i­cal class­es should re­sume for all stu­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly vac­ci­nat­ed chil­dren.

“We are still learn­ing about this virus. The Omi­cron (vari­ant) has re­cent­ly sur­faced in African. We don’t know how it will im­pact us. At this point in time, all we have is the vac­ci­na­tion, we owe it to our kids, we owe it to our fu­ture, to be pro­tect­ed.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke with for­mer coun­cil­lor Claire Boyce who took her third shot. She said there were sev­er­al peo­ple at the site ear­li­er in the morn­ing.

When the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty was con­tact­ed for the da­ta about yes­ter­day’s vac­ci­na­tion, an of­fi­cial said the da­ta was still be­ing col­lect­ed from the var­i­ous sites.

How­ev­er, he said at the Courts branch at South Park a to­tal of 12 peo­ple re­ceived ei­ther the first, sec­ond or third shot of Sinopharm, 56 took Pfiz­er and 16 took John­son & John­son.