Vaccination Encouraged, but Frontliners Without Will Soon Need COVID Test
Kareem Musa
Should Belizeans be required to take the vaccine? It’s a divisive issue, but now the government says that they are approaching it in a different way where those who don’t take the vaccines must show a negative COVID test every two weeks. Today Minister of Home Affairs spoke on this new initiative while Prime Minister John Briceño pondered the issue moving forward.
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
“We will be encouraging front line personnel to get vaccinated. So, the entire month of July we are requesting the following groups to get vaccinated and in the event they do not get vaccinated, then starting august first these individuals will have to present a negative COVID test every two weeks. So, we are not saying are mandated to get the vaccine. We are just encouraging you. Who are the additional frontline personnel? So, it definitely includes nurses, doctors, police officers, military; it also includes our educational frontliners so this applies to our teachers; includes our economic frontliners. So, we are talking about tour guides even though I know the tour guides and tour operators have been getting vaccinated and they have actually the highest percentage of individuals vaccinated. It also includes restaurant owners and employees; they will be asked to get vaccinated, as well as all the casino workers. So, these are the different types of groups that will be expected and in addition we would also like to ask our spiritual frontliners, pastors and priests, we will be asking them to get vaccinated in the month of July.”
John Briceño
Prime Minister John Briceño
“You have to get vaccinated to be able to go back to work – that is something that we should seriously consider as a country; that maybe we have to consider employers to tell their employees if you want to come to work you have to get vaccinated. If you want to work in my hotel you have to get vaccinated. If you want to come and work in my business you have to get vaccinated because maybe it is not about you but it is about the people around you. So, if you don’t care about you let’s care about the people around us. In Cabinet we spoke about it a bit and I hope I am not speaking out of turn here where we are talking about considering very seriously to ensure that all our frontline workers in government must get vaccinated; that the BDF, police, immigration officers, customs officers and all our employees that have to deal with the public must get vaccinated; we are not there yet but we probably may have to get there if we don’t see the numbers are going up quickly within the government service.”
