St James exceeds COVID-19 vaccination targets – Wallace
Published:Tuesday | April 6, 2021 | 12:05 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
St James has exceeded its vaccination target for the first phase of COVID-19 inoculation, says Lennox Wallace, parish manager for the health department.
Wallace said that some sites doubled or tripled their goals.
“At one site, it should have been 60 vaccinations, and we did 120, while at another site, it should have been 35, and we did nearly 100, so we exceeded over 100 per cent of our target range at the sites,” Wallace said.
St James has recorded 3,983 out of Jamaica’s total 41,013 COVID-19 cases up to Sunday, ranking third islandwide. Only Kingston and St Andrew and St Catherine have more.
Wallace said that since the roll-out of the Ministry of Health’s vaccination programme on March 10, St James’ elderly residents have been highly accepting of their COVID shots. Take-up among the parish’s local healthcare workers is at approximately 70 per cent.
The parish manager reported that there was high turnout at the Catherine Hall and Type V health centres in downtown Montego Bay.
“From the first day until today, the sites have been inundated, and our senior citizens are taking up the vaccine more than our younger persons even though the youths’ time has not come yet,” Wallace said.
“We have our health education unit holding Zoom meetings with the citizens’ associations of different communities, and sometimes we see up to 200 persons on the online platform. We believe that once we continue the education drive, the acceptance rate will increase,” he added.
The St James Health Department will this week host a vaccination drive at the Montego Bay Convention Centre in Rose Hall, with plans to inoculate 1,000 persons. It is also projected that all health department staff will be vaccinated by the end of April.
The vaccination education drive has already fanned out beyond Montego Bay, targeting rural communities such as Cambridge, Catadupa, Maroon Town, Adelphi, John’s Hall, and Mt Carey.
The Holness administration intends to vaccinate 65 per cent of Jamaica’s population of nearly three million against COVID-19 by March 2022 to achieve herd immunity.