And, what did the Minister of Home Affairs have to say about the newest Health measures being put on the books?
This morning our Sunup hosts asked him about his involvement in the roundly criticized "Before You Relax, Get Vaxxed" campaign, and whether or not he's cringing in hindsight.
Here's his response:
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"Its difficult because you cannot foresee what's coming next. It's like a hurricane, you don't know which direction Covid is going to take next. Its unpredictable and so nobody could have predicted Delta, so if it is that you have a variant that you know the vaccination is very successful against, meaning the original Alpha variant, we could have said let us get vaccinated then we can relax. Now, with the Delta variant, its hyper transmissible, its deadlier than that the original variant and so we still have to get vaccinated because it has proven successful in terms of preventing you from ending up in the hospital and if you do end up in the hospital, you don't end up dying. You are not likely to die as much as an unvaccinated person and so it does have that effect still. It's still creates that immunity in you and so we have to continue encouraging you to get your vaccination, but at the same time follow all of the different protocols, the face mask wearing, the washing your hands regularly - these are things that often times we forget to do, we get complacent, we let our guards down, because we are eager to get back to normal life, but at the same time we have to understand we are not like the great United States of America which has already hit about 70% vaccinated, so they can go out or Norway or Singapore - all of these develop countries that can open up because they have a high vaccination rate and because they have a strong healthcare system. We have to work with the healthcare system that we have in place and we have to be understanding of that. So, yes we are slow to get to the point of opening up completely, but the higher our vaccination numbers go and the numbers go down, because we are in a surge and it is expected that these numbers will go down in the coming months, then we can consider opening up some more."
The Minister also praised Belize's quote:"Good not great" vaccination numbers saying that we're quote: "doing exceptionally well." He made this determination by comparing us to Jamaica which has an 11.4% vaccination rate.
