Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony on Friday said that he hopes that companies will continue “encouraging” their staff to get vaccinated as it will help Guyana exit the COVID-19 pandemic.
Anthony made this comment during his daily COVID-19 update after he was asked if the government supports the decision by some businesses to make COVID-19 vaccination a requirement for employment.
“If we want business to recover and go back to full employment then one of the things we have to do is make sure the workplace is safe and one of [the ways of] doing that is to ensure that the employees must become fully vaccinated. In that way it helps, because if a positive person comes into the worksite then it reduces the chance of that infection spreading so it is important that we encourage workplaces to get their employees to get vaccinated,” he said.
He added that it is no secret that a lot of people have been complaining about the COVID-19 measures in place but in order to return to some sense of normalcy the entire adult population in Guyana needs to be vaccinated. He went on to add that many businesses have been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and were forced to lay off some staff. He noted that he has seen many businesses encouraging their employees to get vaccinated and expressed hope that this “trend” will continue. Further, he said, some businesses have even approached the ministry to conduct vaccination drives at their workplace and that was done. “There are lots of businesses yet to be immunised but once they coordinate we would get teams out there to vaccinate the staff because we would not be able to exit the pandemic unless people are immunised,” he said.
The minister stated that the government’s position on COVID-19 vaccination remains that it would not make vaccination against the virus mandatory but it will continue to encourage persons to get vaccinated. He added that he remains optimistic that more persons will come forward to get vaccinated, while noting that Guyana is in a fortunate position because many countries around the world are yet to achieve the level of vaccination rate that Guyana has.
