Vaccine blitz needs more information

THE GENERAL registration for the COVID-19 vaccine, beginning with people 75 and over, appears to have started without glitches, or any that is significant. The health ministry’s website has not collapsed, and navigating the portal has been relatively easy.

Neither have there been major complaints about the toll-free number which people can also call to register. Those who have used it have not had inordinate waits, with insipid, periodic interventions of pre-recorded voices telling you how valuable you are, but wait some more. The agents, thus far, have been courteous and mostly efficient. On the first day, the operators fielded more than 3,000 calls, most of which were registered for jabs. And up to Tuesday, over 4,000 people had registered via the online database. We suspect that there was some overlap between the online and telephone registrations.

We are encouraged by this development on several counts, not least for the fact that it might give pause to people who harbour expectations for logistical failure of Jamaica’s vaccination programme. Any hiccup in this week’s roll-out will be viewed, and parlayed, as vindication of their presumption of an inherent incompetence of Jamaicans, and of our inability to get anything right, once it requires more than brawn.

GOOD TEST RUN

Further, this first tranche of public registrations is a good test run of the system, an opportunity to avoid the crinkles of the opening phase of the vaccination exercise, when, at a handful of centres, people other than front-line workers, for whom it was designated, were accommodated for the jab. Clearly, in those instances the protocols were not rigidly enforced. Loopholes were exacerbated because of the absence of a regime for determining who should be inoculated to prevent wastage of vaccines when registered recipients did not turn up.

There are around 105,000 Jamaicans, accounting for approximately four per cent of the population, who are 75 and over. That, in our context, and given this country’s limited resources, is not an insignificant number. Getting them all vaccinated will require that the system works without significant glitches, which could undermine confidence in the process.

The Government’s preference, which is the sensible thing, is for all Jamaicans to take the vaccine over the next year or so as the drug becomes more accessible. That would remove the worry of any further spread of the disease, providing the basis for an unfettered opening of the economy. Its next best hope is that at least two-thirds of the population, approximately 1.8 million people, agree to take the jab. That would probably be sufficient to give us herd immunity, halting any significant spread of the coronavirus. Which takes us back to the current registration, the need to get it right, and for vaccinations to happen without glitches, so as to limit opportunities to talk down the programme with images of chaos.

It is against that background that the authorities must provide further and better particulars about the so-called vaccination blitzes that are to begin this Saturday at the National Arena in Kingston. Large numbers of people, from the currently targeted cohort, are to be inoculated at the designated centres. They will first have to be registered.

POTENTIAL CONFUSION

What is not clear is if these persons will have to be specifically registered for these blitz centres, or whether people who are already on the database can just turn up for the jab. The point is that those 4,000 people who signed up via the health ministry’s online system, and the 3,000 who did so via the call centre, were given specific appointments at the health centres they chose. If these people turn up at the vaccination blitzes we see potential for confusion, as well as difficulties for resource management – unless there are details that have not been shared.

For example, if a person who has an appointment to be vaccinated at a community health centre turns up at the National Arena, will he or she be accommodated? And if she is, is the system sufficiently intelligent to remove the later appointment, and substitute that person’s name with another, and/or reallocate the vaccine?

These are some of the considerations that will be necessary to avoid the kind of inconclusive report over the missing vials of vaccine in Montego Bay. There is no way, because of the lack of specific data, for the internal audit to conclusively determine whether the vials were stolen, inadvertently discarded, used and/or did not exist at all. Given the variation in the number of doses (between nine and 11) extracted from vaccine vials, “it was difficult to conclude on the total number of vials used” when the reported usage is matched against vaccinations done. There is an obvious need for more detailed record-keeping.

Of course, it would not surprise this newspaper if it was eventually determined that the vaccine was stolen, with an intent to offer it on the black market. Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), in its online COVID-19 vaccine registration system for certain categories of workers, felt it necessary to remind such persons that they did not have to pay for the jab. Neither did they have to give anyone who might contact them, ostensibly about being vaccinated, their personal information, which could lead to identity theft. We are aware, too, there is a global problem of theft of controlled drugs from hospitals and other health facilities. In 2018-19, for example, NHS England reported 1,387 such cases, a 19 per cent hike on the previous year.