Co-coordinator of the national vaccination campaign, Dr Elizabeth Ferdinand, has poured cold water on the idea of offering financial incentives to Barbadians to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Reflecting on the underwhelming response to the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine which is the only vaccine Barbados currently has for first doses, she said strategies like monetary inducements, which have been used by some countries including those in the Caribbean, had not been discussed.
Instead, Dr Ferdinand will be focusing her attention on a more robust public education campaign to convince Barbadians of the importance of exercising their “civic duty”.
“I certainly do not feel at this time that we should be giving incentives to anyone to become vaccinated,” the campaign coordinator told Barbados TODAY.
“I feel this is our civic duty, and every single one of us has a responsibility to not only protect yourselves but your family, neighbours and the country as a whole. So, I don’t think that I should be looking to give you an incentive to come and take care of yourself. That is how I feel about the matter.
“I am not saying you might not give a little prize to somebody who is the 250th person or something like that, but that is a different thing,” she added.
Government is aiming to vaccinate 80 per cent of the adult population, but the country is still far from that target and Barbadians appear to be especially opposed to the Sinopharm vaccine, with only about 2 500 of 15 000 first doses being dispensed in a two-week period.
In response to similar trends in Jamaica, the government there introduced a Conditional Cash Transfer for the Vaccinated (CCTV), offering J$6 000 (BDS $130) to citizens over the age of 60 who got the jab.
In Antigua and Barbuda, the Gaston Browne administration offered an 8 000- square-foot parcel of land as a prize in a raffle for vaccinated residents, and the government continues to examine other ways of incentivizing its unvaccinated population.
Apart from not offering incentives, Dr Ferdinand revealed that authorities here have no plans to coerce or force persons to take the vaccine.
“The new Sinopharm vaccine has not been as robust as we would have liked…. Right now, it’s open to everybody over 18, but the take-up is definitely not as fast as we would have liked or that we expected. The reasons for that I am not sure, because that vaccine is a safe vaccine. It might not be as efficacious as the AstraZeneca but it is still a vaccine and it’s better than none at all,” the vaccine coordinator contended.
While Dr Ferdinand reported some negative reactions from the AstraZeneca vaccine, she added that it was still too early to give similar reports about the Sinopharm vaccine. A web page has been set up for persons to report any negative reactions from vaccines.
“They are not very common, and I can’t give you that off the top of my head, but we have had some rashes, we’ve had some numbness of hands which has gotten better, we’ve had some blood clots. But none of them so far has been attributed directly to the vaccine. We have had some allergic reactions, two or three of those, and that is expected…so we have to keep on monitoring them,” Dr Ferdinand concluded.
(kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb)
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