As he blasted government’s COVID-19 response for lack of preparations and enforcement to date, Opposition Leader Joseph Harmon yesterday said that he would advise persons to take the vaccine but it must be of their own volition.
The Opposition Leader informed that he has not yet taken the jab, as he first plans to check with his primary healthcare doctors for their advice.
Government, according to Harmon, needs to take the virus serious enough and first make public a plan that it has crafted on how they would bring balance and handle the virus that brought the world to an economic standstill.
“The government needed to have a proper plan that embraces the positions of this society. The task force that is in place is something we had set up and at the level of the task force better planning can be done. After all these months, we still have not seen the Ministry of Health put out for anything. You [they] don’t really have a plan. Today we hear we get some vaccines from here, some from there and some there and you are not sure where it is being distributed,” he said.
“We have to have a plan that is embraced by this society. We have to utilise the skills that are available in Guyana to bring to bear the problem which we have. This is nonsense about who support the PPP/C. We have made it clear that this is national issue and you need to have the resources placed at the level of the task force to get its work done,” he added.
Key focus for government, he said would have to the strengthening of the mechanism for the edification of this country’s populace. Along with former Minister of Heath Dr Karen Cummings, the Opposition Leader stressed that much is left to be desired of the response from government and that his party was concerned that educating the populace on safety measures and the need for protocols to be established was not being underscored enough by government.
“My plan would be to strengthen and improve the level of public education. My plan would be to engage and embrace more of the professional people who can bring to bear their experience to solve this problem in this country. And my plan would be to ensure that the enforcement measures which are gazetted, are applied across the board, without fear or favour, affection or ill will. And that all of the police officers, all of the officers and those involved in the militia understand that this is a national exercise…,” he said.
“We need to have a better public education system; educating the public on a daily basis on the COVID-19 virus and on the various strains which are emerging. We are learning about the various strains in Brazil and we have such a large border they share with us, which can make us [susceptible]. We have to be mindful of what is taking place in that country. We cannot operate as if we don’t know what is happening in our neighbourhood.”
Since the beginning of this year, Harmon has been urging stronger measures be put in place to curb possible transmission among the populace. He had also pointed to this country’s incapacity to detect new COVID-19 strains and yesterday echoed this point as he called for stricter measures.
He averred that the issue of COVID-19 has to be one of the preservation of the life of the people over the economy or anything else.
“It is the obvious history between life and livelihood and if you were to balance it, I believe, that life would trump anything else,” he posited.
