Following a recent uptick in the daily vaccination rate, after the Ministry of Health resumed its administration of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, Winston Smith, president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association, is urging the Government to procure more doses of the brand.

According to Smith, given the high demand for the Pfizer vaccine, limiting its administration to mainly students long term, is impractical if the country hopes to ever fully recover from the pandemic.

“I am simply saying to the Government, continue to make the Pfizer which seems to be the most popular one that persons are more readily receptive to, seek to have that one be more abundantly available and let the country be restored and go back to some semblance of normalcy,” he said.

While batting for a more widespread administration of the Pfizer jab, Smith appealed to parents to have their children vaccinated as this may be the key to a return to face-to-face classes.

“We have been constantly appealing to parents to send their children out to get the vaccine but we still maintain the fact that face to face is the best option and parents need to help us to help them,” said the JTA president.

He added: “The best way to help us to help them is to allow their children to take the vaccine.”

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Information in August announced that vaccination against COVID-19 would be a prerequisite for the return to face-to-face classes. It added that schools would need to achieve a 65 per cent total vaccination rate to be approved for reopening.

This, however, has since been met with much opposition from various groups and education stakeholders including the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which in its Reopen Schools campaign has called for a return to face-to-face classes for all children, removing any barriers, including school vaccination targets, that stand in the way.

READ MORE:

• UNICEF, private sector groups, youth advocates call for urgent school re-opening
• Face-to-face classes to resume at hundreds of Jamaican schools