Jamaica: Mandatory vaccination will become inevitable – PM

Jamaica Observer | While underscoring that he will not be forcing anyone to take the COVID-19 vaccine, Prime Minister Andrew Holness yesterday said that mandatory vaccination will become unavoidable when a larger segment of the population becomes inoculated and demand that they should not be restricted by safety measures because some people refuse to take the jab.

“As the number of persons vaccinated reaches a critical threshold it is going to become inevitable, because that population that are vaccinated will start to demand — as you are seeing the demands coming — that, ‘Hey, we should not be held back in lockdowns and reduced gatherings; we should be allowed to go to restaurants and go to parties, move about, and go to churches because we are vaccinated. It is the unvaccinated who should remain under some sort of restrictions’,” Holness said.

“In free and democratic countries, this is what happens,” the prime minister said following a vaccination blitz at the Trelawny Multi-purpose Stadium.

“We must first increase our level of vaccination, and we can only do that at this stage by increasing the level of knowledge and awareness in our citizens. We are not doing that by fear. This is not fearmongering, we are all independent, free people with our own minds to think. And I believe if we provide our citizens with the right information, the appropriate facts, they will make the right decisions,” said Holness who has been visiting vaccination sites across the country in an effort to influence more Jamaicans to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The prime minister reiterated that, “at this stage government is not considering implementing mandatory vaccination; however, probably it will emerge in the near future. The government is contemplating how this could be done. We have asked for advice from the Attorney General’s Office and that advice is being developed. What we are currently doing, which I have already stated, is that before we can move to the step of making vaccinations mandatory, we must first ensure the people of the country understand the whole process of vaccination,” Holness said.

Just this week, the Jamaican Bar Association said it does not believe that requirements for mandatory vaccination, whether by employees or the state, contravene the constitutional rights of Jamaicans.