Dr. Cameron Wilkinson, Medical Chief of Staff of the Joseph N. France General Hospital, has saluted residents of St. Kitts and Nevis, who stepped forward to help put an end to the global COVID-19 pandemic by taking a jab.
On Thursday, May 06, 2021, the twin-island Federation crossed the 40 percent mark of persons who have received a dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
A dashboard issued by the Ministry of Health revealed that at the end of business day on Thursday, 10,356 doses of the vaccine were administered in St. Kitts, and 3,303 doses in Nevis. This is a total of 13,558 or 40.2 percent of the target population. Of that number were 277 doses administered as a second dose to persons who received a jab 10-weeks ago.
In a Facebook post, Dr. Wilkinson hailed the continued progress of the Roll Up 2 Roll Out vaccination campaign noting that vaccinated persons “did the right thing.”
“If there was ever a time when I was prouder to be a Kittitian/Nevisian, it is now,” he wrote. “The eyes of the world are on us. We, a tiny little Federation, banded together and contained the deadly coronavirus with a prescription of non-pharmaceuticals. We will now march towards herd immunity with the knowledge that the vaccine helps decrease transmission, prevents severe disease and death.”
The Medical Chief of Staff looked to the near future and indicated that he was looking forward to a return to normalcy.
“We will get back to normal. Brighter days are ahead,” he wrote. “We will soon be ready to welcome the world, and they will surely know how to find us. I love you, my people. One shot at a time, and we will get there without a single life lost.”
Health authorities are pushing to get 33,037 or 70 percent of the Federation’s population fully vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.