And one way to expedite the relaxation of that measure is by getting vaccinated. As you've heard the minister say previously, the higher the vaccination numbers, the sooner regulations can go back to pre-COVID. But the problem is that the numbers have been stuck at 49% for months now and without the vaccine for children below the age of 12, it doesn't look like we'll be reaching that much sought after 70% any time soon. But MOH isn't throwing in the towel, and the minister said they have already begun a new outreach program.
Hon. Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"I ask the question to Dr Beer, how many persons died in Belize before we even had access to vaccine? 312 Belizeans. I am sure if we had the vaccines from the get go, we might not have had so much death sin the country because those persons never had the opportunity to get vaccinated. They didn't get the opportunity because we didn't have the vaccine at the time. So that is 312 Belizeans lives lost because of the inaccessibility of the vaccine at the time. But now, fast forward, we have enough vaccine in the country, we have the vaccine available, yet we are only at 49% vaccination rate of persons who have gotten their doses, first dose, and I think 46 or something percent who have both doses. We want to encourage our Belizean people, let us get vaccinated, the young people who are able now to get vaccinated for booster, I am inviting the parents, get your children boosted, it's important."
"We want to ensure out Belizean population at least get it to where ewe want to go, our target was at 70-75% we are still pushing that agenda at the ministry, like I said we are already on the ground doing groundwork, we want to target the schools as well again to make sure we can get the young population vaccinated for their booster."
"And of course we are working as government with our vaccine team to access the 5-11 year old vaccine or the pediatric vaccine for that age range which hopefully we can get in the near future so we are working very hard to get that done and when we get that in hand we are going to go on a very aggressive campaign to get our young population vaccinated."
Bernard explained that they will also be specifically targeting residents that are unvaccinated.
