COVID Measures Could Be Further Relaxed If Indicators Improve – MOH

The Minister of Health and Wellness has indicated that there could be further relaxing of the coronavirus (COVID-19) restrictions if the vaccination rate increases and the COVID indicators improve.

Speaking at the COVID Conversations digital press conference on Thursday (June 10), Portfolio Minister, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, said it is “not anticipated that we are going to be living in this [restricted] environment forever”.

“The idea is to manage the risks, to overcome the risks and, hopefully, over time given all the measures, including the vaccines, eliminate the risk,” he said.

He said that ideally, the country needs to reach general immunity and have 1.9 million persons vaccinated.

“The truth is… you may never get to that figure, but the more you achieve persons getting vaccinated is the less the risk, because that [vaccine] is the most effective defence as of now and, therefore, you will see the elimination and relaxation of the [non-clinical] measure that are intended,” he noted.

Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie, said that while it would be difficult to specifically state the measures that could be relaxed, “certainly that is the way we are going”.

“The better our numbers get, the more we get vaccinated, then the more likely we are to reduce more and more restrictions,” she said.

As at Friday (June 11), Jamaica had recorded 49,179 cases of COVID-19 with 69 new cases.

A total of 27,201 persons have recovered from the virus and there have been 990 deaths associated with COVID-19.