PM apologises for vaccine fiasco

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has apologised for the fiasco this past week in the attempt to roll out a first-come-first-serve vaccination programme for people over 60 years old and under 60 with comorbidities.

Speaking at a news conference Saturday, Dr Rowley admitted failure in the process.
“Wednesday was a bad day. The Government tried to do too much with too little.”

He said the blame shouldn’t be laid at the feet of the technical staff but at the level of the government.

He said, however, that he is “in this for the long run” and will not be distracted by “an intermittent failure or unreasonable expectancies”.

He asked the country not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” saying that the Government has been doing a good job in managing the pandemic thus far.

“We are not going to throw in the towel because one day in a year and a half didn’t go well,” he said.

He revealed that in the very near future the country will not receive “a boatload” of vaccines to do mass vaccinations.

“What is going to happen is that we will have a steady stream of vaccines that we will have to manage,” he said.

He said the State will segment the population on an ongoing basis “so that we do not invite you out for vaccines that we don’t have and even if we do have it we do not invite you out to crowd as last week”.

He confirmed 200,000 Sinopharm will come to the country on Monday and said they will be used to begin vaccinations on Wednesday. However, he said that is not enough for mass vaccinations.

He also confirmed that 13,500 vaccines came into the country from Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

He had no update on the vaccines the United States has indicated it will give to Latin America and Caribbean countries.

“I have been in conversations with a lot of people in this matter. The final approval of the movement of the doses has not yet come,” he said.

With regards to the removal of restrictions, the prime minister said it was too early to do so.

“I was hoping that at this time we would have been a little bit further down along from the peaks of may. We have to be realistic, we have to be careful and we have to be cautious,” he said.

He said construction workers will not be able to resume working this coming week and said the Minister of Finance will see what assistance they can possibly be given.

CNC3 Editor
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