PRIME Minister Andrew Holness is not happy that only 40,000 students, 12 years and older, have taken the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. There are approximately 204,000 high school students in Jamaica.

Responding to questions from the Jamaica Observer during a tour of a vaccination site at the Isaac Barrant Health Centre in St Thomas yesterday, the prime minister said: “I say to parents, if you want to see your children back in schools quickly, get them vaccinated and you should get vaccinated as well. I am not seeing schools opening for face-to-face, but the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance have made provisions for the distribution of tablets. I will be continuing my own tablet distribution programme to ensure we reach as many kids as possible, so they can get their education online.”

A number of schools have hosted vaccination blitz sessions to facilitate their students moving one step closer to returning to face-toface classes.

On Tuesday, the North Street-based Kingston College (KC) opened its gates to students and their parents, as well as staff to get vaccinated. Roughly 1,500 were vaccinated, including people living nearby.

Members of KC’s Parent Teacher Association (PTA) were praised for joining forces to enable a smooth process, which was pleasing to Vice-Principal Marguarita Douglas Hall, who said the school was pressing to have at least 65 per cent of the school population vaccinated in anticipation of the reopening of schools for face-to-face classes.

Students, she said, have been falling behind. Holness said yesterday that, while many children are eager to return to school and may want to take the vaccine, their parents have prevented them from doing so – for one reason or another. What Government will have to do now, according to the prime minister, is to use schools as vaccination centres to specifically target children until schools achieve at least 65 of per cent vaccination.

“I am certain that, as parents, you see the learning loss. There are some children who do well with online learning. But, if you want your children to go back to school, I urge you to get them vaccinated. My personal view is that there are more children who want to get vaccinated but parents are standing in their way. We can’t interfere with the rights of parents over their children, but what we can do is continue the encouragement of parents to get their children vaccinated.

“You are going to see a programme rolled out very shortly, where we are going to get more schools as centres of vaccination for schoolchildren, and we are going to have the principals do the organisation to specifically reach out to the children on their register,” said Holness.

With at least one businessman sharing his belief recently that the prime minister was playing a game of one-twothree red light with citizens by loosening then quickly tightening COVID-19 containment measures, such as curfews and 24-hour lockdowns, along with other criticisms of his handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic, Holness said he was prone to making errors as he is only human.

However, he encouraged Jamaicans not to engage in a blame game and asked them to remember that he was responding to the cries of the people, which indicated that the measures were causing discomfort across various sectors.

People, he said, should realise that once there was a spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths, he tightened the measures again, instead of leaving things to spiral out of control.

“When things were fine, there was a huge cry from all sectors to reopen the economy. We were clear, but we also understood there could have been social upheaval had we not responded to the growing demand. We could have had deliberate civil disobedience, businesses could have collapsed, and people could have had serious psychological damage by virtue of sustained lockdown.

“When we came out of the last spike, we gradually began reopening in the beginning of June and then mid-June the entertainment and business sector said we need to do more and then we opened in July. We did not just do one opening, carelessly. We kept our word and as soon as we saw an uptick, we increased the curfew hours and put in other measures,” the prime minister said.