The Tribune

By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

MOST regional countries are not ready to roll out COVID-19 vaccinations and should instead focus on preparation, a Pan American Health Organization official said yesterday.

“I want to sound a note of caution to countries that they don’t rush their vaccination campaigns,” said PAHO Director Dr Carissa Etienne.

“Being ready is more important than being quick. This is the time that the member states in our region must act on being ready to distribute and to vaccinate. From our assessment, most regional countries are not yet ready to roll out vaccines, but they do need to get ready very soon. So, we are urging them to take this time to ensure that everything is in place.

“First of all they need a clear understanding of which vaccine will be delivered to them and how to best adapt to the logistics they will need. They need to prioritise the vulnerable groups that need to get vaccinated first. Healthcare professionals that will be engaged in carrying out vaccinations that will need to be trained and prepared. We cannot stress sufficiently the communication to the population so that people know when and how each group will have access.”

On Sunday, the Office of the Prime Minister said the National COVID-19 Vaccine Consultative Committee is currently working to finalise an operational plan to distribute coronavirus vaccines to eligible residents in the shortest possible time across the country.

Vaccinators are currently being recruited, who will be among the first to receive the jab once the drugs are available in the country.

Last week,  Health Minister Renward Wells said the government had not yet decided what vaccine it was going to purchase and that it would work with PAHO/WHO and directly with pharmaceutical manufacturers to obtain the vaccines.

Meanwhile, Africa and the United Kingdom have both reported a new variant of the COVID-19 virus in its citizenry. These strains are said to be more infectious, but not more deadly. Scientists have not yet totally confirmed whether these variants are resistant to COVID-19 vaccines. Dr Sylvain Aldighieri, PAHO’s incident manager for COVID-19, confirmed that these variants are now in the Caribbean.

He said: “There are two more countries in the region who have reported in recent days, detection of the variant that has been characterised in the UK. There are two countries that have reported that variant from South Africa. So the number of countries that are reporting variants is increasing.

“As of today, (Tuesday) we have agreements for a regional network with the Ministry of Health of the Bahamas, University of the West Indies in Jamaica, laboratories in Barbados, Dominica and Haiti.”

Dr Etienne told reporters that a startling number of new COVID-19 cases have been reported in the region over a short period of time.

She said: “In the last week we saw more than 2.5 million new cases of COVID-19 in the region of the Americas – more than half of all global infections. In the same period, 42,000 people from the Americas have lost their lives to the pandemic.

“This sustained boom in cases is sobering proof that our region, and our world, is failing to control this coronavirus. In far too many places public policies are not congruent with the severity of the situation. And many of us have relaxed the control measures that we know work, which have helped us stay healthy and keep hospitals functional up to now.”

Although The Bahamas’ new COVID-19 cases seem very low and manageable, in the past few months, Dr Etienne did not have such a good report for the region.

She said: “In the Caribbean, the first week of 2021 saw the highest number of cases reported since the beginning of the pandemic. Barbados had a 61 percent increase in new cases over the past two weeks, most among the local population. And as cases rise, so does the demand for testing, severely stressing the laboratory capacity.

“The new variants detected in the UK, South Africa and Brazil are also concerning, as they may be playing a role in accelerating new infections throughout our region. We are studying the affects of variants on transmission and our genomic surveillance network of 21 laboratories is tracking the emergence of variants in the region.”

The Bahamas’ Ministry of Health has not reported any evidence that the new COVID-19 variants are in this country. However there is no local capacity to test for the strains and if suspected, samples would have to be sent to a lab overseas for confirmation.

As of Monday, the country had 8,068 reported cases of COVID-19, with one new case reported. 


One hundred and seventy-five people have died from the disease and currently there are 13 people in hospital infected with the coronavirus.

Dr Etienne urged the leadership in the region to continue to enforce COVID-19 protocols as, she says, this is not the time to let guards down.