Doctors urge colleagues to board vax train
Published:Thursday | March 11, 2021 | 12:23 AMJudana Murphy/Gleaner Writer
President of the Medical Association of Jamaica (MAJ), Dr Andrew Manning, has asserted that if a significant percentage of healthcare workers decline to take the COVID-19 vaccine, it could spell trouble for public health.
Three nurses died from COVID-19 last week and a recent survey has shown that 200 more are either in quarantine or isolation at a time when the public-health sector is coming under increasing strain from a rise in admissions. Among them are 27 from the University Hospital of the West Indies and 20 from Cornwall Regional Hospital in St James.
“If people don’t take it, then you’re going to continually have people coming off the front line and less people being able to treat patients,” said Manning, who received his first shot about 11 a.m. yesterday.
He stressed that the uptake among health professionals also impacts the public perception to the vaccines.
The flip side is that the pandemic could stretch on for much longer.
Summing up the first day of COVID-19 vaccination exercises in the island, Manning said that doctors have been receptive.
Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton said it is too early to determine if vaccine hesitancy was on the decline among Jamaicans.
“We expect that there is going to be suspicion, doubt, uncertainty and outright rejection of the vaccine. We have a responsibility to assist with understanding, to give as much information as possible to overcome some of those objections,” he reflected.
Tufton added that the Government may not be able to influence everyone, but the target is to achieve herd immunity by inoculating two-thirds of the population over the next 12 months.
Nurse Kevin Morrison, who works at the St Ann’s Bay Regional Hospital, reasoned that with a certain level of immunity among healthcare workers, they will be able to carry out their duties with their minds more at ease.
“When they do test positive and have to go home, that leaves us significantly short. We have to be covering some ridiculous hours ... . It puts a burden on the healthcare system,” he said, adding that he does not believe healthcare workers who decline the vaccine should be prevented from working on COVID wards.
“We literally have to put on about 15 different pieces of apparatus before we go inside the COVID-19 ward,” Morrison said. “For those healthcare workers who don’t want to take it, they just have to ensure that they follow the protocols as it relates to donning and doffing when they are seeing those patients.”
MAJ’s Manning said at this point, a distinction cannot be made based on the current needs and the fact that the vaccination programme has just begun.
“What the healthcare workers have to consider is that the vaccination is going to make them much safer and it is the best and quickest way to protect those who are at increased risk of contracting COVID,” the medical doctor explained.
Further, Manning said it was one of the rationales for targeting that group of people as priority so that their chances of getting sick are reduced, and, therefore, the likelihood of them being withdrawn from the front line.