Pub­lic ser­vants have been giv­en an­oth­er month to abide by the Gov­ern­ment's vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy.

The Gov­ern­ment had ini­tial­ly set a dead­line of Jan­u­ary 17 to make all pub­lic of­fices in­to safe spaces that al­lowed on­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple to work, but on Sat­ur­day Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the one-month re­prieve.

"I have asked the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to take a lit­tle more time and of course, it can­not be for­ev­er, so to­day I am an­nounc­ing that what we had in­tend­ed that might have been done on Jan­u­ary 17, will now be done some­where around Feb­ru­ary 17," he said.

Row­ley was speak­ing at the time at the Gov­ern­ment's COVID-19 up­date at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's.

The Prime Min­is­ter last ad­dressed the mat­ter back in De­cem­ber and said that the mid-Jan­u­ary dead­line was giv­en then be­cause of the low vac­ci­na­tion fig­ures and the high hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion rate. The vac­ci­na­tion rate has since im­proved, which gave the State some wig­gle room to ex­tend the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the vac­cine pol­i­cy by one month.

"I am very pleased for some of the re­ports I have got­ten from the pub­lic sec­tor that we have im­proved some of our vac­ci­na­tion," he said.

Row­ley said that there were still some peo­ple who were "dig­ging their heels in" and oth­ers were be­ing en­cour­aged to not co­op­er­ate.

"That is par for the course, we don't ex­pect that overnight every­body would change their views," he said.

The Gov­ern­ment would leg­is­late and be in the same po­si­tion as the pri­vate sec­tor to de­ter­mine which ar­eas of Gov­ern­men­tal op­er­a­tions could op­er­ate un­der leg­is­la­tion as safe zones are be­ing at­tacked too, he said.

"What is safe in a pan­dem­ic? Who can of­fer you safe­ty in a pan­dem­ic? It is a rel­a­tive term, qua­si-safe," he said.

He said that the cit­i­zens are bet­ter off if all are masked, sani­tised and so­cial­ly dis­tanced even in safe zones.

"If the op­po­site is what we are do­ing then that zone is not very safe, we know how the virus is spread so to en­gage in dis­course over safe zones and safe zones not be­ing safe, and vac­cines not be­ing use­ful be­cause it does not pre­vent you from get­ting the virus, that is just car­ry­ing on an un­pro­duc­tive con­ver­sa­tion," he said.

He called on peo­ple to fo­cus on what can be done in­stead.

"When we looked at our ex­po­sure, when we looked at our lev­el of deaths, when we looked at the pro­jec­tions that we were fac­ing, I said the last time I was here that the Gov­ern­ment, as the largest em­ploy­er will man­age its work­places in such a way to ac­knowl­edge the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme that is tak­ing place, those who are vac­ci­nat­ed, those who are out and to ac­knowl­edge those who made the choice of not be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed and there are con­se­quences to both sides," he said.

Row­ley said that the last time he ad­dressed the is­sue back in De­cem­ber he did say that the Gov­ern­ment was pre­pared to leg­is­late to help man­age the na­tion­al vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme and the safe zone arrange­ment.

Row­ley said the pri­vate sec­tor had tak­en a num­ber of steps to keep its op­er­a­tions open.

"Many as­pects of the Gov­ern­ment sec­tor is al­so open and we are al­so vac­ci­nat­ed," he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that the Gov­ern­ment had set a tar­get of 80 per cent vac­ci­na­tion for the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and list­ed out the vac­ci­na­tion fig­ures for all the Gov­ern­ment min­istries. The Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs boast­ed the high­est vac­ci­na­tion da­ta at 87 per cent while Tourism and So­cial De­vel­op­ment were just un­der at 85.3 per cent and 83.3 per cent re­spec­tive­ly. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty vac­ci­na­tion num­bers hov­ered just over 34 per cent.

"What this tells me and it should tell you is that there is a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple in the min­istries that are vac­ci­nat­ed, a very sig­nif­i­cant num­ber," he said.

"No­body has said that vac­ci­na­tion elim­i­nates the pos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting in­fect­ed or re­quir­ing health care at an in­sti­tu­tion, no­body has said that. It is said that you are much bet­ter able to re­spond to the virus if you are vac­ci­nat­ed," Row­ley said.

Ac­cord­ing to the da­ta, some 14.1 per cent of all pa­tients hos­pi­talised with the virus are vac­ci­nat­ed while the ma­jor­i­ty of 85.6 per cent were un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

"You do not have to be a physi­cist or a math­e­mati­cian, you on­ly have to be a per­son who opens his or her eyes and see that that ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple that are end­ing up in the hos­pi­tal look­ing for hos­pi­tal care from doc­tors, nurs­es and their sup­port staff are peo­ple who are un­vac­ci­nat­ed," he said.

Row­ley said that tak­ing the vac­cine had al­ways been left up to per­son­al choice but that choice will have con­se­quences.

Row­ley said that he be­lieved that the death fig­ures were eas­i­ly dis­missed by peo­ple in the ab­sence of nor­mal fu­ner­al pro­ceed­ings.

He said he per­son­al­ly be­lieved that if there were nor­mal wakes and fu­ner­als, the re­al­i­ty of the death rate would be stark­er.

"We might have been act­ing dif­fer­ent­ly but we hear­ing num­bers and we are re­duced now to num­bers," he said.

Row­ley said that the choice was still there and the vac­cines were not manda­to­ry.

"If manda­to­ry vac­cines are about sav­ing your life how many of you are pre­pared to put a rope around your neck and jump off?" he asked.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that there had al­ways been manda­to­ry vac­cines and even that came with a choice as un­vac­ci­nat­ed chil­dren were not al­lowed to par­tic­i­pate in free pri­ma­ry school ed­u­ca­tion.

"This is the best way to keep the coun­try op­er­at­ing as the pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to rage," he said.