While saying he expected “substantive discussions,” Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony has called the main opposition’s position in the National Assembly on the recently passed COVID-19 motion as a “lost opportunity”.
Anthony presented his verdict during a COVID-19 update where he also stated his hope that the opposition would be a part of the whole effort.
On Wednesday, the National Assembly passed a motion in Anthony’s name to recognise the seriousness of the pandemic and to pledge to support the needed resources to bring relief to the country. The main opposition, APNU+AFC, did not support the motion.
“We thought that there would have been more substantive discussions on the matter and I think in some cases it was a lost opportunity because we did not hear anything concrete from the opposition,” Anthony said, before adding that he expected it to have certain positions on the topic of vaccines, which was mentioned during his presentation.
The minister said that they still have to move forward on discussions regarding the situation. “There’s a lot of work ahead of us and I do hope we can get the opposition to be part of this whole effort,” Anthony noted.
Before bringing the motion to the House, he said, he looked at the COVID-19 situation internationally, regionally, and locally, and observed the response in the beginning and the current response to enable certain discussions.
“I think everybody would like us to come up with a strategy on how to exit the pandemic and by all calculations the only way we can exit the pandemic is if more people would develop some form of immunity,” he indicated, while reiterating that it can only be reached in two ways — through a vaccine or through persons getting the virus and recovering, thus giving them some form of immunity.
