Pollster gives thumbs down to vaccine incentives
Regional pollster Peter Wickham said it’s unfortunate that Caribbean leaders must resort to offering incentives to sway the hesitant to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Antigua and Barbuda has been offering $50-dollar grocery vouchers and petrol to those who get a first dose of the jab, and Prime Minister Gaston Browne said he may even consider other incentives to include Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC).
While incentives are being offered in neighbouring islands too, Wickham yesterday told Observer that one should not have to incentivise people to get a life-saving shot.
“The issue is important enough that government should not have to go the way of inducement by KFC. It belittles the importance of the vaccination which ultimately protects you,” he said.
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Vaccinate or Suffocate – The Stark Choice
By Sir Ronald Sanders
(The writer is Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the United States and the Organization of American States. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London and Massey College in the University of Toronto. The views expressed are entirely his own)
SECTIONS of the population in many of the 14 independent CARICOM countries are in grave danger of undermining their own health and economic interests by their refusal to be inoculated against the coronavirus, COVID-19.
At the time of writing (May 13), 159.5 million persons have been infected with the virus worldwide. Of this number, almost 3.4 million have died. Shockingly, the countries of the Americas from Canada to Argentina, including the Caribbean, account for almost half of the global infections and deaths – 64.1 million infections and 1.5 million deaths.