Pfizer favourite tag lingers as free chicken, credit dangled at vaxxers
Published:Monday | November 1, 2021 | 12:10 AMDavid Salmon/Gleaner Writer
More than 50 persons, or a quarter of those who turned up for Sunday's incentive-laden vaccination drive of free chicken and phone credit, declined the jab because their preferred brand, Pfizer, was not among the available options.
That development remains a nagging source of concern for the Holness administration as it mulls over the looming prospect of a vaccinate-or-test mandate among a population with high levels of hesitancy or resistance.
The vaccination crisis will be exacerbated because although Jamaica last week received 145,000 doses of Pfizer, they will be strictly administered to the approximately 100,000 adults and children awaiting their second shot. The rest will be dispensed exclusively to children aged 12-18.
The Spectrum Management Authority (SMA) partnered with fast-food chain KFC and telecom FLOW to dish out meal vouchers and free credit to incentivise take-up, but organisers fell short of their 300-person goal.
Twenty persons turned up at the SMA's Harbour Street location in downtown Kingston within the first half-hour of the vax drive, and 150, in total, rolled up their sleeves for a dose of AstraZeneca or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine by the close of the initiative.
Sunday's vaccination has received a ringing endorsement from a number of newly vaccinated individuals. And managing director of the SMA, Dr Maria Myers-Hamilton, was pleased with the turnout.
“Persons were waiting from 9 o'clock this morning to be vaccinated. So the good news is that there is a steady flow of persons coming in, so the worry of crowd control is not a worry anymore,” she said.
The organisation will continue its vaccination drive over the next two weeks.
Tyesha Richards, who received her first dose of the AstraZeneca on Sunday, believes that initiatives like these might encourage unvaccinated persons to get the jab. She said that persons have different motivations for getting immunised.
“While some people will come for the vouchers and the stuff, some won't, but it can encourage people to come and take the vaccine,” Richards said.
She admitted that talk of mandatory vaccination, or the presenting of negative results from pricey PCR tests, weighed heavy on her mind, prompting her to take her first dose.
“I came here to take the vaccine because eventually, sooner or later, it will become mandatory, and I will have to take it, so might as well I take it today and get it out of the way,” she told The Gleaner.
To date, Jamaica's inoculation drive has lagged the campaigns of its Caribbean neighbours, with per capita take-up of more than 13 per cent only bettering Haiti's compliance.
More than 150,000 doses of AstraZeneca are expected to be dumped with the October 31 expiry date passing. Another 60,000 doses of AstraZeneca that expired in September were discarded.
Carol Brown, a marketer, expressed satisfaction at the convenience of being vaccinated at the SMA's location. While he did not expect to receive FLOW cell phone credit and a KFC meal voucher, he believed that the Government should encourage more such incentives.
Myers-Hamilton said that providing incentives that cover basic needs such as Internet connectivity and meals would yield more success.
“This pandemic has hit home hard to the inner city, to persons in the communities around us, because people live from day to day,” she told The Gleaner.
“With the lockdowns, it has been a challenge.”
The Government is targeting full vaccination of two-thirds of the population by March 2022. It aims to administer one million shots by the end of this month. That will require just over 80,000 shots to be administered by the end of November.
There are 28,251 active coronavirus cases. More than 2,230 people have died from the disease.