Chief Medical Officer Calls on The Elderly to Take the Vaccine

Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr. Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie, is lamenting the low level of coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination take-up, especially among the nation’s most vulnerable.

She is imploring the elderly and persons who are immunocompromised and/or who are living with a chronic illness, such as diabetes and hypertension, to get vaccinated, as this is the best way to protect themselves against severe illnesses, hospitalisation and death, should they contract the virus.

“We are seeing that 74 per cent of our population has not been touched by vaccination, and we have shown the value of vaccination, that the deaths are occurring in the unvaccinated persons. It is the unvaccinated persons who are ending up in hospitals with severe cases of COVID,” she pointed out, while speaking at a virtual COVID Conversations press briefing, on January 6.

The CMO noted that 372 persons are now hospitalised, with 204 confirmed positive for COVID-19 and another 168 are suspected cases.

She said that of those positive, 35 are moderately ill, 23 are severely ill and three are critically ill. Thirty-two of the 35 who are moderately ill are unvaccinated, while 19 of the 23 who are severely ill are unvaccinated. All three persons who are critically ill are unvaccinated.

The CMO stressed that it is very important at this time to move the vaccination numbers up to protect the vulnerable population from becoming ill with COVID.

“Right now, we have just over 40 per cent of [persons in] the 60 to 69 and the 70 to 79 [age group] who would’ve received either one or two doses of the COVID vaccine, which means that almost 60 per cent of persons in these age groups have not received the COVID vaccine and therefore remain quite vulnerable,” she said.

“With the numbers going up so rapidly [due to the Omicron variant], it is very important that we get these persons vaccinated urgently,” she added.

The country’s vaccination level is at 21 per cent. To date, only 580,000 Jamaicans have been fully vaccinated.

Up to 5:00 p.m. on Thursday (January 6), 1,229,977 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered – 643,202 first doses; 501,032 second doses; 76,783 single doses (Johnson and Johnson); 1,588 immunocompromised doses (persons who have gotten a third AstraZeneca dose, because of their compromised immune system); and 7,372 booster shots.

A total of 98,194 COVID-19 infections and 2,486 deaths have been recorded to date.