PSVI collating employee data ahead of Gov’t vaccine plan’s phase two
Published:Friday | July 9, 2021 | 12:09 AM
To access this article in full please login or register today
The Private Sector Vaccine Initiative, PVSI, now has some 200 companies signed up, its primary spokesman, Peter Melhado, said this week, with expectations that more will join as the national vaccine programme, NVP, run by the Jamaican Government...
The Private Sector Vaccine Initiative, PVSI, now has some 200 companies signed up, its primary spokesman, Peter Melhado, said this week, with expectations that more will join as the national vaccine programme, NVP, run by the Jamaican Government heads towards its second phase.
“We haven’t got to phase two of the NVP, where the private sector is next in line. We’ve making plans in the event that we get the opportunity to jump-start that if the government gets more vaccines,” said Melhado, who chairs the PSVI Logistics and Operations Committee.
Private-sector interests had committed in mid-2020 to supporting the government’s efforts to counter the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. At last report, they had invested $25 million up to March to support vaccine roll-outs, including 400 tablet computers for healthcare workers to upload vaccine data from the field into the CommCare database.
Another of the PSVI’s primary goals is to get private-sector workers inoculated against the virus so that workplace activity can resume safely.
Melhado says the private sector recognises the difficulty in sourcing vaccines, but is working collaboratively with the government on getting the population inoculated against COVID-19.
Phase one of the national vaccine programme focused on government officials, first responders, vulnerable citizens, such as the elderly and those with comorbidities.
Phase two covers various sectors, such as hotels, banking, agriculture and manufacturing, and is targeting nearly 600,000 persons for inoculation.
The third phase is open to others in the general population, spanning 1.12 million people.
The Ministry of Health & Wellness wants to have 65 per cent of the population vaccinated by March 2022, under the three phases. As of Wednesday, July 7, the ministry reported that 176,664 persons had received a first dose of the vaccine, and 109,489 of that number had got their second dose. The vaccination rate is currently at 9 per cent of the population.
“We want to be ahead of the game by having phase two done as quickly as possible, because most people in the private sector are of the opinion that the quicker we can get people vaccinated, is the quicker that we can return to a productive environment,” said Melhado.
He adds that all of the 200 businesses that are being tracked have expressed an interest in getting their workers vaccinated. Companies are in the process of collating information, which they are expected to pass along to the PSVI in two weeks, and which is expected to be uploaded, eventually, to the CommCare system. CommCare is an initiative of the PSVI and Ministry of Health & Wellness, and was built with UNICEF funding. Melhado said the system is hosted by American company Dimagi.
“We’re on a programme of preregistering our employees. We’re trying to preregister as many of them as possible,” he said.
“When we get to phase two, we will upload those into the system and be ahead of the curve … . I think the real challenge is to get companies to get the information together, and for them to engage employees so that it improves the take-up rate,” Melhado said.