In search of vaccine, some tourists find luck in Caribbean
When Lydia Todman booked a trip to St. Croix with her husband earlier this month, she was hoping only for a relaxing getaway. But when she arrived, she learned she could also get the COVID19 vaccine.
Ms. Todman, 43, said that local residents she knew on the island encouraged her to book a vaccine appointment. At the time, she and her husband, who is 54 and has asthma, were not eligible for a shot in their home state, Georgia. But in St. Croix, every adult is eligible. So she visited the territory’s Department of Health website, saw they had appointments available for the next day, and signed up.
“We were in and out within a matter of a few minutes,” she said.
Nearly 106,000 people call the U.S. Virgin Islands home, and the territory has administered more than 33,000 COVID-19 vaccines to date, with about 10,600 people now fully protected with two doses. At a news briefing, the governor, Albert Bryan Jr., estimated that 3%, or approximately 1,000 of those vaccines, have gone to tourists.
“Have we become aware of the fact that people are seeking us out? Yes. And you know, we accommodate everyone,” said Angela East, coordinator and director of the COVID-19 vaccine program at Plessen Healthcare, which has administered 44% of the vaccines in the territory. “We are going to give you the shot in the spirit of putting as many shots in arms as possible.”
Health authorities and ethicists don’t see a big problem with the vaccine tourism in the U.S. Virgin Islands, given the ample supply of the shots and high levels of vaccine hesitancy among residents there. And the trend may wane as more U.S. states open up their eligibility criteria. Still, wealthy Americans traveling to the Caribbean for vaccines is one of the many ways vaccine access across the world is shaped by race and privilege.
In St. Croix, St. John and St. Thomas, the three largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands, vaccines are readily available to tourists partly because of vaccine hesitancy, “which is very high in the Virgin Islands,” said Dr. Tai Hunte-Ceasar, medical director of the territory’s Department of Health. This hesitancy seems most pronounced among residents of color, Mr. Bryan said at the news briefing. “Caucasians that live in the Virgin Islands are more apt to take the vaccine and take it quicker,” he said.
When Bridget Platten, 40, who works in sales in New York City, received her COVID-19 vaccine in St. Croix, she was encouraged to tell friends. “The doctor said: ‘Listen, I have all this vaccine. And people are afraid to get it here,’ ” Ms. Platten recalled. “‘If you have any friends, or there’s anyone you know who wants a vaccine, please have them call me.’ ”
Some Americans have flown to the island specifically to be vaccinated. “My friends from New Jersey went, and the most probing question they faced was, ‘Will that be Pfizer or Moderna for you?’ ” said Rob DeRocker, a marketing consultant from Tarrytown, N.Y., who spends winters in St. Croix.