Caribbean news online
The director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has expressed her woes over the number of Caribbean residents who refuse to take their vaccines against COVID-19.
In a recent CNBC article, PAHO director Dr. Carissa Etienne, who serves as the overseer for WHO’s Latin America and the Caribbean branch, lamented about the spread of vaccine misinformation in the region, which makes it challenging to convince people to get inoculated.
With the region deciding on opening its borders to tourists after a year of shutting down, and the existence of SARS-CoV-2 variants that are more contagious, the spread of the virus will prove to be more difficult to contain, especially for the healthcare sector.
The Bahamas, Curacao, Martinique, Guadeloupe and Trinidad and Tobago are some of the nations that are currently struggling with the surge of infections from COVID-19.
According to the tally by Reuters, there have been at least 41,802,000 reported infections and 1,397,000 reported deaths caused by the novel coronavirus in Latin America and the Caribbean so far.
“I want to make a special appeal to my fellow Caribbean persons please, we have to be extremely careful,” Etienne said. “We have limited bed capacity and limited ICU capacity in our small islands … our health systems will become overwhelmed very quickly.”
“We are playing with our lives. So my appeal to you is, get up, wake up from that slumber, wake up from that dream, because we know that the vaccines are safe,” Etienne added.
She called for the residents to listen to “truthful, scientifically based information and evidence.”
More Than 800K Pfizer Vaccines To Be Delivered To Caribbean
Meanwhile, the Associated Press has reported that the U.S. government will deliver approximately 837,000 Pfizer vaccines to Caribbean nations.
The Bahamas will receive 397,000 doses followed by Trinidad and Tobago with more than 305,000 doses. A total of 70,200 doses will be given to Barbados, while 35,100 are allocated for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, 17,550 for Antigua and 11,700 for St. Kitts and Nevis.