Dear Editor,

WHAT are the costs of vaccine hesitancy? Some costs are easily computed in terms of dollars and some costs cannot be translated into monetary terms. Who will pay these costs is an interesting question. Storage of vaccines that should/could have been utilised had it not been for hesitancy is costly, use of purpose-built storage facilities, special freezers with appropriate backup power generation, specialist staff to monitor and control retrieval and security all have costs. These facilities were supposed to be short term as it was anticipated that Guyanese would appreciate the efforts to vaccinate the entire population and participate eagerly; instead, vaccination slowed to a crawl and it has taken the implementation of regulations requiring persons to show proof of vaccination to get the inoculation drive moving again. Delivery of vaccines requires transportation and medical personnel to administer injections; again, these are costs that have increased due to prolonged programmes.

There was an appropriate hue and cry over the price paid for the Sputnik V vaccines which prompted the Irfaan Ali administration to provide a detailed explanation of the rationale behind the decision to pay above the suggested market price; will we now ask who will pay the costs outlined above caused by hesitancy and the spread of deliberate misinformation? I would suggest that a cut-off date for free vaccinations for adults be announced and thereafter individuals be charged a fee that increases with time as a fair solution; after all taxpayer’s money is not meant to be wasted because of ignorance and politically-motivated mischief.
In the category of costs that cannot be recovered monetarily are the loss suffered by our children who were kept at home for the protection of their parents and older family members; the risk posed to children is minimal and to remain unvaccinated is to ask your child to sacrifice her/his education, sport, and socialisation (childhood) upon your altar of ignorance. Shame on any parent, teacher, or health worker who refuses to inoculate, shame!

The health sector was in difficulty before COVID-19 but managed the pandemic well; however, more can be done with the enormous amount of data gathered by the Ministry of Health; can they let us know how many persons are hospitalised in the COVID centre? Of those, how many are vaccinated? My information is that no fully vaccinated person has died from COVID-19 to date; it would be useful to have that important fact confirmed publicly by an official government source.
Dr.Rochelle Walensky of the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) said on July 19, 2021 “there is a clear message coming through; this is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated”. Six weeks later, we can remove ‘becoming’ and ‘unvaccinated’ can be substituted by a wide variety of unflattering words; get vaccinated, the life you save can be your own.

Yours sincerely,

Robin Singh