OPPOSITION spokesman on health Dr Morais Guy says Jamaica should not consider joining other countries to push for mandatory COVID-19 vaccination.

Guy, in an interview with the Jamaica Observer, said the Administration should consider using moral suasion, as well as revamp its communication strategy surrounding the State’s vaccine campaign, which should result in the masses accepting the vaccines.

“… If you do your communication strategy better then you will have a greater reach,” said Guy. “I don’t think we should adopt that policy [of mandatory vaccination]. The second reason is that we have not reached the stage where we have provided enough vaccines for all the people in this country,” Dr Guy said.

He was speaking against the background of steps taken by the United States Government to mandate federal employees to take the vaccine, as well as a report that the Jamaica Employer’s Federation is crafting a mandatory vaccination policy.

“The other thing, too, is that some people are afraid of getting two jabs, which is why the Johnson & Johnson vaccine [single dose] would be a good option. My view of the whole thing about hesitancy is you don’t talk about hesitancy until you have sufficient vaccines in this county to say okay we have this, let us see whether we can get this take-up,” he argued.

“Another issue is when you have persons who are inclined to take it and they go and they are being frustrated in their efforts to take it, they will not necessarily want to come back again to do it. So the message has to be very clear in terms of how we go about it, but I think the reach is part of the challenge,” Dr Guy said.

Last month Jamaica received its largest shipment of COVID-19 vaccines to date, with a donation of 300,000 doses of the AstraZeneca brand from the Government of the United Kingdom. Jamaica, up to last weekend, had administered at least 369,960 doses of COVID-19 vaccines, making it so that just around 132,000 individuals have been fully vaccinated — a mere 4.5 per cent of the population.

The island is currently in the throes of a third wave of the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19, with hospitals across the island reporting that they are out of bed spaces allocated for treating individuals with the virus. Up to Sunday, the Ministry of Health reported 281 new cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the island to 55,140. At the same time there were nine additional deaths, pushing the total fatalities from the virus to 1,231. The positivity rate (the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases from all samples tested) was at an alarming 30.3 per cent. So far a total 509,846 tests have been conducted since March of last year when the virus was first detected in the island. Health professionals at public health facilities, meanwhile, are once again under increased pressure to the point where medical staff who were on vacation have been recalled.

Even so, Dr Guy said mandating Jamaicans to take the vaccine is not the sole solution.

“The different message we want, as the Opposition, is one which also has boots on the ground with community health aides — the influencers in the communities, almost akin to the violence interrupters in the Citizen Security and Justice Programme (CSJP). You also have people who people look up to — the pastors, the principals, community leaders, the justices of the peace. They are the ones the ministry needs to involve in the conversation for them to have a discussion with those they have influence over to try and get the vaccine,” he stated.

Dr Guy also criticised the approach taken in the pilot being done by the Ministry of Health’s mobile vaccination unit.

“I find it a little strange that the minister is doing this pilot with the mobile vaccination unit in Kingston and St Andrew. I think, quite frankly, that those should be done in communities in very deep rural areas,” Dr Guy said, noting that the one current spot in St Andrew for the mobile pilot is in close proximity to two major vaccination centres.

“Let us look for somewhere in ‘Timbuktu’, choose my constituency then, look for somewhere in Flint River, where the transportation between Port Maria to Flint River is going to involve the person taking two or three transportations to get there. Go to a deep rural community and try and influence those persons to come out and take it,” said Dr Guy, who is also the Member of Parliament for St Mary Central.

He added: “Utilise community centres; the church halls, don’t just confine it to the clinics. Use community health aides that did the testing to spread the message, use the same community health aides to guide you going out into the communities. Those are the areas we think the Government’s communication strategy and influencing strategy should be directed, not just nationally where you put one or two ads on the radio or on social media, which the vast majority of the older cohort of people in this country don’t use.”

He noted that Jamaicans have questions about the vaccines that can only be answered effectively by people on the ground.