SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Vac­cine sham­ing and threats are pre­vent­ing more peo­ple from get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed against the COVID-19 virus and its vari­ants.

This com­ment was made by Dr Faith B Yis­rael, the Sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day, the THA Health Sec­re­tary said the Min­istry of Health has con­stant­ly used an ap­proach of threats and sham­ing, which has pushed more peo­ple away from get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed.

"That has been the process of COVID-19 com­mu­ni­ca­tions from the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic in 2019, and it cer­tain­ly has not changed,” she said.

And Dr Faith B Yis­rael main­tains the vac­ci­na­tion process has been stymied be­cause of the mech­a­nism used to com­mu­ni­cate about the vac­cine. She said

“I am one to in­sist that when we pro­vide in­for­ma­tion about the vac­cine that we pro­vide, ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion that al­lays peo­ple's fears about the vac­cines, and that would al­low them to make an in­formed de­ci­sion,” she said.  

“I have been speak­ing with the peo­ple and peo­ple are very scared, so the mech­a­nism that has been used by the Min­istry of Health and even the Prime Min­is­ter—which is re­al­ly vac­cine sham­ing—has not worked.  There­fore, we are see­ing quite a bit of re­sis­tance.  We are see­ing hes­i­ta­tion on one end, and we are see­ing re­sis­tance on the oth­er,” she ex­plained.

“In To­ba­go, we have de­cid­ed that we are go­ing to use an­oth­er ap­proach,” she stat­ed.  “We are go­ing to use a soft­er ap­proach."

She said more con­sul­ta­tions would be done with stake­hold­ers:

"In due course we would be able to in­crease our vac­ci­na­tion rate of peo­ple who are com­fort­able to be vac­ci­nat­ed and not be­cause they are sim­ply forced to be vac­ci­nat­ed."

The Health Sec­re­tary not­ed that in­di­vid­ual pock­ets in com­mu­ni­ties would be iden­ti­fied for heart-to-heart dis­cus­sions.

“I have ac­tu­al­ly had con­ver­sa­tions with some­body who told me that they are afraid that they would die. That is not a sim­ple idea.  The thought of dy­ing is a re­al fear and when I spoke to that per­son, I an­swered the crit­i­cal ques­tion they had.  I as­sured them of the safe­ty and that per­son has now ac­tu­al­ly tak­en the vac­cine and got­ten their sec­ond dose,” she re­vealed.

She added: “There is a re­al gen­uine fear that in­di­vid­u­als have, and we have to re­spect the fact that these are hu­man be­ings with re­al con­cerns.  We can­not con­tin­ue shout­ing.  We can­not just con­tin­ue bouff­ing.  We can­not just con­tin­ue vac­cine-sham­ing peo­ple. We need to pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion and the com­fort that is re­quired for them to make that de­ci­sion on their own.”

Dr Yis­rael told Guardian Me­dia the TRHA will in­stall a re­frig­er­a­tion unit over this week­end to deal with the pile up of bod­ies of per­sons who died with COVID.  She said the re­frig­er­a­tion unit has a ca­pac­i­ty of around 50 bod­ies and is to be lo­cat­ed on the com­pound of the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

“The num­ber of deaths that are hap­pen­ing every day are high­er than the nor­mal,” she said.  “In ad­di­tion, we have that com­pound­ed with the fact that many of the fam­i­lies of in­di­vid­u­als who have died are on quar­an­tine them­selves and there­fore, can­not do the nor­mal process of get­ting their loved ones buried quick­ly, so that has re­sult­ed in there be­ing quite a pile up, for want of a bet­ter term."

Dr Yis­rael said the THA was try­ing to en­cour­age ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers to get buri­als done faster and would be pro­vid­ing ad­di­tion­al stor­age for the de­part­ed.  She said hav­ing to get ad­di­tion­al stor­age cre­ates the idea that more peo­ple are ex­pect­ed to die.

"That is a sad, sad re­al­i­ty for To­ba­go but it's a con­tin­gency mech­a­nism we had to put in­to place be­cause of the num­ber of bod­ies," she ac­knowl­edged.