KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Make­ba Pa­ponette feels like the Gov­ern­ment stripped away her free­dom over her body as she can­not choose be­tween tak­ing a COVID-19 vac­cine and feed­ing her chil­dren.

It was a no-brain­er for a vis­i­bly up­set Pa­ponette, who showed up at the South­ern Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) vac­ci­na­tion site in San Fer­nan­do with three of her four chil­dren.

She had no in­ten­tion of tak­ing a COVID-19 vac­cine pre­vi­ous­ly but did so for her chil­dren.

The sin­gle moth­er works for the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme, a body man­dat­ed by the Gov­ern­ment to on­ly op­er­ate with vac­ci­nat­ed work­ers.

“I am up­set be­cause it is like the Gov­ern­ment is forc­ing this vac­cine down sin­gle par­ents’ throats. I am a sin­gle par­ent with four chil­dren. They are hold­ing my work against me. If I do not work, my chil­dren can­not be fed. My back is against a wall right now. In oth­er words, I have to take it, or oth­er­wise, I can­not feed my chil­dren, and that is how it is right now,” Pa­ponette said.

The dead­line for the Gov­ern­ment-man­dat­ed vac­ci­na­tion for the pub­lic sec­tor ends on Fri­day.

Those who do not take the vac­cine will go on leave with­out pay. Pa­ponette left SAPA wor­ried that an ad­verse re­ac­tion to the vac­cine could leave her chil­dren with­out a moth­er. 

“I do not feel any­thing right about now, but I do not know about the af­ter-ef­fects. I am do­ing this be­cause of my chil­dren. I did not want it un­til they said we had to take it to work.”

A mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion work­er was afraid to speak on the record against the vac­cine man­date, fear­ing his su­pe­ri­ors would vic­timise him. He al­so did not have plans to take the vac­cine, say­ing he feared an ad­verse re­ac­tion.

There was no uptick in pub­lic ser­vants get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed at this site, with the el­der­ly ac­count­ing for a large per­cent­age of the to­tal vac­ci­na­tions dur­ing the morn­ing pe­ri­od.

Health work­ers and peo­ple get­ting their sec­ond dos­es were among those at­tend­ing. 

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Allyson West said her Min­istry had vac­ci­na­tion fig­ures from all min­istries.

How­ev­er, sta­tis­tics from some pub­lic sec­tor en­ti­ties are out­stand­ing.

“With re­spect to the for­mer, the lat­est ta­ble I have omits a cou­ple of min­istries, so I am wait­ing for a re­vised ta­ble. What I can tell you is that most have at­tained a 78-85 per cent vac­ci­nat­ed range. A cou­ple of them are in the 50-60 per cent range, and there are two min­istries be­low 50. The over­all av­er­age based on the in­for­ma­tion be­fore me is 69.9 per cent,” West said.

As the Gov­ern­ment moves ahead with its pub­lic ser­vice vac­ci­na­tion, West said the sites were not yet as busy as it hoped. She said the Min­istry of Health con­tin­ues to pro­vide the ser­vice as some pub­lic ser­vants vis­it oth­er sites.

“We are hop­ing that the num­ber keeps im­prov­ing as we inch clos­er to ‘D Day’.”

The chance to get a job for the first time in eight years was enough to mo­ti­vate Naz­im Mo­hammed to take the John­son & John­son sin­gle-dose vac­cine.

At 54 years old, Mo­hammed said it was dif­fi­cult stay­ing at home, and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme was worth it.

Mo­hammed took the John­son & John­son be­cause he was afraid of in­jec­tions and did not want an­oth­er.

“I did not want to take it be­cause it is over 35 years since I have not seen a doc­tor. I have been strong,” Mo­hammed said.

Cou­ple Michael and Mer­le Lawrence were among the el­der­ly who took their third dose of a COVID-19 vac­cine yes­ter­day. Af­ter tak­ing their sec­ond dose, Michael, 75 and Mer­le, 71, con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor vac­ci­na­tions and think boost­ers are nec­es­sary giv­en the spread of the Delta and Omi­cron COVID-19 vari­ants.

Michael said they are al­so fol­low­ing the Min­istry of Health’s pro­to­cols. He urges younger peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed as well.

“I am con­cerned, very much, about the younger peo­ple who are not re­al­ly lis­ten­ing. More so, the Min­istry is ed­u­cat­ing peo­ple every day, and yet still, they are ac­tu­al­ly lay­ing a deaf ear on the younger folks. I hope the per­cent­age will in­crease so that they will take it al­so,” Michael said.