PM, First Lady among first recipients of COVID-19 vaccine

Prime Minister Allen Chastanet on Wednesday morning received his first dose of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. Chastanet, his wife Raquel DuBoulay-Chastanet, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sharon Belmar-George and Health Minister Mary Isaac joined a handful of frontline workers in receiving the jab on the first day of the rollout of the vaccine in the country.

“First of all, I want to thank the Lord for blessing us,” Chastanet said after receiving his shot. “I also want to thank all the frontliners and all the persons who’ve been working so diligently and putting themselves on the line to serve all of us…I also want to thank the government of India. The OECS and some of the CARICOM countries have been in discussions with the government of India for some time and I’m so grateful to them for making these vaccines available.”

Chastanet also thanked the governments of Barbados and Dominica who both shared vaccines with Saint Lucia last week— paving the way for the vaccination of frontline workers here. “Nurses and doctors are irreplaceable; firemen, ambulance drivers and our policemen are irreplaceable. These are not things where you can just go and find somebody else to be able to replace them with… Being able to come out and protect them right now is also a way of protecting all Saint Lucians because they’re the ones who are really at the forefront of fighting this battle for us.”

Dr. Belmar-George described Wednesday as an “extremely important day.”

“Immunization and vaccines have been the most effective and efficient measure in public health and we expect to see a similar in terms of COVID-19 for Saint Lucia,” she said.

“Through our initial COVAX facility arrangement, we’re going to be getting about 74,000 vaccines. Through the arrangements through India, we should be getting another 185,000 but in batches, and we’re expecting to get our first batch of that this week. We’re also working through the CARICOM alliance to get our third allocation to ensure that we can provide this vaccine to the majority of the population because herd immunity is extremely, extremely important if we are to be safe and to cover especially those below 18, who would not be eligible at this point for the vaccine.”