Gail Alexan­der

If it turns out that school-age stu­dents aren’t vac­ci­nat­ed in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers due to the “con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries” around or wor­ried par­ents, Gov­ern­ment may very well have to have a par­al­lel ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem with vir­tu­al as well as face-to-face class­rooms.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day gave this as an ex­am­ple of pos­si­bil­i­ties Gov­ern­ment may have to ex­plore if vac­ci­na­tions, where stu­dents are con­cerned, do not reach the lev­els they are hop­ing for.

He made the com­ment dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with for­mer UNC MP Bhoe Tewarie, dur­ing Tewarie’s “Brighter Morn­ing with Bhoe” pro­gramme on MCTV, which was al­so car­ried on TTT.

Row­ley felt the amount of vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy cur­rent­ly not­ed in T&T was due to peo­ple who felt the virus wasn’t as se­ri­ous as Gov­ern­ment was say­ing. He said a “sig­nif­i­cant ca­coph­o­ny of voic­es” felt it was be­ing over­played for some ul­te­ri­or mo­tive by Gov­ern­ment and oth­ers felt they had to “put their fin­ger in the wound to feel.” He said T&T had ex­pect­ed the worst and some be­lieved they could get by with­out re­spect­ing the threat of the virus.

The Prime Min­is­ter said he was “re­al­ly con­cerned and wor­ried” that it doesn’t take a wors­en­ing of T&T’s sit­u­a­tion for the sec­tor of un­co­op­er­a­tive cit­i­zens to un­der­stand the sit­u­a­tion and vac­ci­nate.

He said Gov­ern­ment was try­ing to con­vince peo­ple that it wasn’t just them in the sit­u­a­tion but it was a “na­tion­al im­per­a­tive,” where T&T was “like a piece of cloth” and “every fi­bre has to be un­bro­ken for the cloth not to have a hole.” He said he hoped Gov­ern­ment could en­cour­age peo­ple that re­sponse to the dead­ly virus meant strength­en­ing them­selves so if they be­came ill, they could fight it.

Queried about pos­si­ble manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers at some time, since peo­ple have to re­turn to work, Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment has a role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in all these mat­ters and if it came to a point where the rea­son­able de­ci­sion is Gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion to en­sure T&T gets the best of its re­spons­es, Gov­ern­ment would be guilty of dere­lic­tion of du­ty if it didn’t act.

“But we’re en­cour­ag­ing the pop­u­la­tion to do these things with­out Gov­ern­ment hav­ing to pum­mel you in­to shape to do it,” Row­ley said.

For ex­am­ple, he said if it turns out sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of the stu­dent-age pop­u­la­tion aren’t vac­ci­nat­ed due to the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries around and wor­ried par­ents, Gov­ern­ment may very well have to run two - par­al­lel - sys­tems of school, with one vir­tu­al and an­oth­er, face-to-face class­rooms and par­ents will have their choice.

“But clear­ly, Gov­ern­ment has to pre­serve the pop­u­la­tion the best way, as best ad­vised by the ex­perts who know this COVID threat,” he said.

Row­ley said he wouldn’t say any­thing on the pub­lic sec­tor just yet but would await what the vol­un­tary dri­ve pro­duced. But he said if Gov­ern­ment had to take a fur­ther de­ci­sion they would take it, “... If it turns out the pop­u­la­tion is at greater risk by not do­ing what they’re re­quired to do, then there will be a role for Gov­ern­ment,” the PM said.

Gov­ern­ment was ini­tial­ly look­ing at al­low­ing stu­dents from forms four to six the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­turn to in-per­son class­es. How­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has now said on­line class­es will con­tin­ue at the start of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year next week un­til they are able to as­sess vac­ci­na­tion lev­els be­fore go­ing for­ward.

He said if there’s a high lev­el of vac­ci­na­tion in any seg­ment of a pop­u­la­tion, the sci­ence may show there may not be over­ly high risk. But if there’s low vac­ci­na­tion lev­el and a high lev­el of un­vac­ci­nat­ed, the sci­ence will show there is a high­er risk and ac­tion would be need­ed to change that.

“For ex­am­ple, in schools, if there’s a high lev­el of vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents one could tol­er­ate a small lev­el of un­vac­ci­nat­ed teach­ers. But if there’s high un­vac­ci­nat­ed lev­els on all sides - teach­ers and stu­dents - then you’re ask­ing for trou­ble.”

He said he’s get­ting re­ports that vac­ci­na­tion was hap­pen­ing to a large ex­tent among Forms 4-6. When schools re­open, he said Gov­ern­ment will have to go to the schools to do fur­ther en­cour­age­ment. With some choos­ing vac­ci­na­tions and oth­ers not - still a free choice - and pre­fer­ring home­school­ing, he said Gov­ern­ment was work­ing the sit­u­a­tion out with­out too much force and dis­rup­tion.

“Let’s see what turns out. But if Gov­ern­ment has to act, the Gov­ern­ment will act,’’ he said.

Row­ley said the Delta vari­ant will al­so sure­ly cause a prob­lem for T&T. He not­ed that in the UK, high vac­ci­na­tion lev­els had helped that coun­try cope with high Delta cas­es, pre­vent­ing high death and hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion rates. He called on the pub­lic not to waste the in­vest­ment made via the lock­down by al­low­ing T&T to be over­come by in­creased in­fec­tions.

The PM al­so re­it­er­at­ed why the State of Emer­gency ex­ten­sion was need­ed and ad­mit­ted Gov­ern­ment mem­bers were miss­ing the “free­dom” as well as the pub­lic. But while this was be­ing tak­en away, he added, “We’re giv­ing you valu­able op­por­tu­ni­ty to sur­vive a pan­dem­ic.”

He said he wasn’t sur­prised at the Op­po­si­tion ab­stain­ing from the vote on the ex­ten­sion, as they’d made their over­rid­ing po­si­tion clear they weren’t sup­port­ing any­thing Gov­ern­ment brings to Par­lia­ment. He not­ed heavy Op­po­si­tion in­vest­ment in urg­ing the pub­lic not to co-op­er­ate with the SoE and to demon­strate out­side Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day.