st. vincent and the grenadines

Country: St Vincent and The Grenadines

Capital City: Kingstown

Area: 150 sq miles

Population: 107,000

 Life Expectancy: Total population: 76.2 years

 Male: 74.1 years

Female: 78.3 years

Currency: Eastern Caribbean (EC)dollar (ECD)

Major Language: English

Kingstown, SEPTEMBER 08, 2022 (MIC) -

While residents of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) have pretty much moved on from the COVID-19 pandemic, the country is looking forward to a legal challenge, which, apart from the economic aftershocks, might be the major vestige in the immediate future. The St. Vincent and the Grenadines Teachers’ Union and the Public Service Union are suing the government over the vaccine mandate, which resulted in hundreds of public sector workers, mainly teachers, losing their jobs last December.

 The government has since relented from its hard-line position on vaccination and is now welcoming unvaccinated workers -- except those in the healthcare sector -- back into the classroom, if they are prepared to abide by certain protocols, including frequent testing, physical distancing and the wearing of facemasks. The majority of the workers have not responded to the government’s offer, with only 10 of the 212 teachers who lost their job over the mandate, having reapplied for employment at the end of August, according to Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Curtis King.

 Minister of Finance, Camillo Gonsalves, said that SVG was the only country in the world, which, in 2021, had to withstand the COVID-19 pandemic, a volcanic eruption, a hurricane and a drought.

 But the country may also be the only one in the Caribbean whose government is facing a lawsuit over its vaccination policy that essentially forced public sector workers to choose between vaccination and employment. Lawyer Jomo Thomas is representing the unions in their lawsuit against the government. Thomas detailed the government’s response to the pandemic as regards its vaccination policy, noting that the mandate came in the form Statutory Rule & Order No. 28 of 2021, a law passed by the Cabinet.

 He pointed out that in April 2020, the government declared a medical emergency and in March 2021, brought a series of acts in play, including SR&O 28 of 2021. Section 5.1 made the vaccines mandatory for a section of public sector workers who the law described as “frontline workers”. Sections 8.1 and 8.2 said that if workers did not comply, it became a crime for an unvaccinated worker to attend work after being given notice that the worker should be vaccinated. If 10 days elapsed without the worker having taken the vaccine, the worker was deemed to have resigned his or her post.

 “… we felt that the actions of the state were disproportionate to the challenge which it had, and that, fundamentally, these actions were also illegal,” Thomas said, noting that the court has agreed to judicially review the government’s decision. 

 The trail is slated for November 29 and December 1.

 But, even with the legal challenge pending, Prime Minister and Minister of Legal Affairs, Ralph Gonsalves, has urged the workers to reapply for employment. Of the two public sector unions, the Teachers’ Union has been more vocal on the matter and held a protest in Kingstown in August, calling for the workers to be reinstated, rather than rehired.

 However, the Prime Minister dismissed this, saying that if the workers were “reinstated”, it would mean that the government is admitting that the mandate was illegal and would have to pay the workers for the time that they have remained off the job.

 “… reinstatement in law has a different meaning … As far as we're concerned, under the law, the teachers failed and or refused to comply with the requirements of the law, which we are satisfied is constitutional and legal. They're contesting that. And that's fine. That's their right; I don't have a quarrel with that,” the prime minister said.

  Some teachers have also dismissed the Prime Minister’s exhortation, saying that it is “a bait” and that he cannot be trusted. Among them is Nikeisha Williams, a former general secretary of the Teachers’ Union, who joined the protest in Kingstown in August and urged the unvaccinated teacher to not reapply for employment.

 Williams said that the prime minister’s pleading means that the dismissed teachers’ stand is very impactful.

 “Don't take the bait. They have to reinstate us. Don't bother with him. His word has proven to be untrue time and time and time again. We must not be fooled; we must not fall short,” Williams said.

However, Thomas, noting that he does not advise the unions on industrial matters, said that rehiring the teachers would have no implication for the legal challenge.

 “But what it indicates is that the government's case is so weak that the government is now recommending a whole host of things that it said could not happen.”

 The lawyer said the government is “backpedaling” on a number of things, including rehiring unvaccinated people, and ensuring that people who “abandoned” their job, according to the mandate law, do not lose their pension benefits, as it has said would have been the case.

 “The only thing that he seems to be holding on to now is that if people come back, they may not get paid for the months or whatever time they were out,” the lawyer pointed out.

 “… it seems to me that he's clearly evidencing that his case is weak, because historically, he would like to rub his opponents facing the dusts,” said Thomas, a former senator and election candidate for Gonsalves’ Unity labour Party and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly under his administration.

 Politically, the parliamentary opposition, the New Democratic Party, supports the union’s position.

 “… the government is just being stubborn about it. Because they know that they need the teachers, they know that they need the police [officers],” Opposition Leader Godwin Friday said in support of the reinstatement of the public sector worker.

 The opposition supports vaccination against COVID-19 but has said that people should be allowed to choose whether they want to take the jab.

 Friday said that giving the government the benefit of the doubt, and whatever their intentions might have been at the time, dismissing the workers over the vaccine mandate was “wrong”.

 He said the government needs to correct -- to the benefit of students, the police service and other affected institutions -- the situation that the vaccine mandate has caused.

 “… the government, no matter how stubborn they are, they will have to reinstate them. …They need to be made whole again, from the time when they were made the victims of this draconian policy,” said Friday, who is also a lawyer.

 The opposition leader, who has been a lawmaker since 2001, pointed out that the government has repeatedly come to Parliament to repeal or amend laws that it had passed.

 “It's a matter of just simply repealing the legislation. I said, ‘Bring it to Parliament. I will help',” he said.

 He, however, said that the government is trying to hide behind the law “so that they don't have to feel that they've stepped down from the error in judgment that they made. And there's no way around it.”

 Amidst the legal challenge, the government is buoyed by the performance of the economy, relative to other members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, and the Caribbean Community, some of whose members overlap.

 The finance minister said that while the fall off in tourism was bad, it was less severe than elsewhere in the Eastern Caribbean because St. Vincent and the Grenadines never closed its borders or went into lockdown.

 “So the rest of the Eastern Caribbean declined by 17%, 18%, 20% as a result of COVID. We declined by 5%,” he said of 2020.

 Then, when La Soufriere volcano erupted explosively in April 2021, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank predicted that the Vincentian economy would shrink by another 6 to 6.5%.

 “The truth of the matter is that we managed the situation so well, that we did not decline, we actually grew fractionally by about half of a per cent,” the finance minister said.

 “And that blew the minds of the international community that we had this volcanic eruption, loss and damage of over $650 million, and we still managed slight economic growth.”

 Preliminary estimates from the Ministry of Finance are that the Vincentian economy will grow by over 5.5% in 2022.

 “One of the primary risks involved is how long will inflation last, how long will the war in the Ukraine last,” the minister said, adding that even after the war ends, sustained sanctions could still affect inflation negatively.

Debt is a serious issue for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, he said, adding that all Eastern Caribbean countries “had to borrow their way out of COVID”.

 He, however, said that the country also had to borrow its way out of the impact of volcanic eruption, but was careful to take only highly concessional loans.

 Before the pandemic, the eight-member Eastern Caribbean Currency Union had set 2030 as the year by which members should attain a debt-to-GDP ratio of 60%. That has since been revised to 2035.

 The finance minister said that in the short-term, the national debt would increase because of borrowing to build a new port and a new hospital.

 “These are concessionary loans, but they're still debt. But the trajectory of our debt will continue to trend downwards after these initial borrowings and, God willing, that we don't have another hurricane or major natural disaster, we will be on target to hit our 2035 debt target.”

 And while the finance minister is optimistic about the future, the opposition leader is concerned about issues of accountability surrounding the COVID-19 spending. 

 “And as for transparency, the programmes were administered by the government. We had asked for an oversight from the Parliament, you have people from both sides of the aisle, and this wasn't done,” Friday said.

 He said that as a consequence, opposition parliamentarians “haven't really had much to say, or much insight or much information about how these programmes were actually administered”.

 The opposition leader said that because of this “lack of accountability” and with some of the oversight mechanisms such as the Public Accounts Committee not functioning as intended, Parliament cannot be sure that the developmental assistance was spent as intended.

 “And the government itself has the Director of Audit, who can audit various programmes and so forth. But with the lack of resources, very little of that is done outside of the principal objective or goal or duty of the director, which is to do the report on the government finances annually.”

 While data is not readily available, the opposition leader believes that the pandemic has magnified the poverty situation in the country.

 The 2018 poverty assessment report was never released, but leaked data indicated that poverty had moved from 30.2% to 36.1% in the preceding decade.

 “And so when the pandemic came, to my mind, it made the situation worse, because all of a sudden, people in the tourism sector, for example, … all of them were back home, no income, and government programmes were all short term, and couldn't replace the income that they were losing,” the opposition leader said.

 Friday said that many people have not recovered economically from the impact of the pandemic, because the industries are not back to normal.

 “The tourism sector is still not functioning the way it had done before the pandemic, and the gains that we can make, post-pandemic, that some other countries are doing, we in St. Vincent are still not really prepared to do it, because we don't have the capacity in the mainland,” he said, referring to St. Vincent Island.

 He said that the country’s traditional weaknesses did not get better with the pandemic, including the fact that the economy is small, open and “completely at the mercy of exogenous shocks…

 “And, of course, when the pandemic came, it showed that very clearly, because now everybody in the world is concerned about their own welfare,” he said.

 But according to the finance minister, what also did not change with the pandemic was foreign direct investment into the country.

 “And while it may have slowed down, it did not stop,” he said, mentioning, among others, the Jamaica-owned Rainforest Seafood plant that opened in St. Vincent in July, as well as the Royal Mill and Sandals Beaches, two hotels that are under construction.

 “So, whereas there has been a drop off regionally, in new foreign direct investment, we were fortuitous in that a lot of our foreign direct investment was just beginning at the time of the COVID pandemic,” Gonsalves said.

 He said that while the pandemic slowed down these investments, nobody pulled out.

 “So we have an influx of foreign direct investment at the moment. And we hope that as this wave of foreign direct investment begins to recede, the conditions created by COVID will also recede, and that we will not have the drop off in foreign direct investment that some of our neighbours may experience.”

 The finance minister said that the situation in St. Vincent and the Grenadines did not result from any careful planning.

 “It's just fortunate that our projects were beginning at that time and they will be rolled out over a period when we expect foreign direct investment to decline. It will not be declining in our context, because of the sheer volume of projects that are already underway.”

 Much of the foreign direct investment that is helping to buoy the Vincentian economy comes from across the region.

 However, despite the investments in the tourism sector, the outlook for visitor arrival from across the region is bleak, posing a threat to the regional integration movement.

 “One of the big impacts initially of the pandemic on regional integration was that COVID killed LIAT,” the finance minister said of the regional carrier that collapsed during the pandemic.

 “You talk about patients with underlying conditions perishing because of COVID? LIAT had a lot of underlying conditions and when COVID struck it, and people stopped flying, it was difficult to keep the airline in the air.”

 Gonsalves said that the demise of LIAT was not felt immediately because people were not flying during the pandemic.

 “But once COVID began to ease and restrictions began to ease, people began to notice that the replacements for LIAT, the hodgepodge of airlines … had their own constraints, which made inter-regional travel very difficult, and the lifeblood of integration is travel between and among our islands and between and among our people.”

 He said the fact that many Caribbean residents now have to fly to the United States to get a connection to another Caribbean country represents “a serious retardation of years of progress and integration”.

 The finance minister noted that Eastern Caribbean governments and Guyana have all agreed to invest in a new airline to replace LIAT and the Caribbean Development Bank is researching the optimal number and type of aircraft, routes, hub locations and other matters.

 He, however, noted that as a result of the economic crisis of 2008 and continuing, CARICOM countries essentially had stepped back slightly from the integration process so as to allow themselves to respond to the challenges and recalibrate.

 “What has taken place now is the opposite. COVID impacted everybody so evenly, and so quickly, that we realised that greater integration was the response,” Gonsalves said.

Kingstown, May 31, 2022 (MIC) -

SVG focusing on recovery, future resilience 

Two years after recording its first case of COVID-19 and EC$141 million in spending later, St. Vincent and the Grenadines is looking toward economic recovery after the pandemic. And whereas the eruption of La Soufrière was the “wild card” in 2021, this year, it is the conflict in Ukraine, says Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves. At the same time, Fitzgerald Bramble, an economist and opposition lawmaker, says that the pandemic has exposed several deficiencies in the Vincentian economy and presents an opportunity to restructure the economy so as to make it more sustainable. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have estimated that the Vincentian economy would have contracted by more than 6% in 2021. However, the country registered 0.5% economic growth, according to the Minister of Finance. And while, in practical terms, this means that the economy remained flat, it also meant that the government was able to hold things together at a time when the prediction was for economic decline.

Image 01: Member of Parliament for East Kingston, Fitzgerald Bramble, an opposition lawmaker. (Photo: Kenton X. Chance) Image 02: Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Information Technology, Camillo Gonsalves. (Photo: Kenton X. Chance)

“Now remember, that it had shrunk the year before so it's not that we were back to normal, it's just that we didn't go further down in the hole,” the minister said, adding that economic growth for 2022 is projected at 8%. The 2022 economic projections were premised on the gradual reopening of the global economy from COVID-19, a large uptick in construction activity in SVG, and the recovery of agriculture after the volcanic eruption. “Most of those things are taking place,” the finance minister said. “Even though COVID is still with us, you've all witnessed the relaxation of protocols around the world and seeing that travel is increasing.” He said too bookings in local hotels have improved, including advanced booking for the first Vincy Mas -- the nation's carnival -- since 2019. “Similarly, we still anticipate a very large increase in construction activity in St. Vincent and the Grenadines this year,” Gonsalves said, mentioning the new Beaches by Sandals hotel being built in the country.

“They've commenced hiring and work has begun but massive work where they expect to get up to 1200 employees is expected to begin very shortly,” he said. The government has also awarded contracts for the construction of state funded hotels to be operated by Holiday Inn Express and Marriott.

“So all of the things that we began the year with in terms of prediction, are doing well. The wildcard is what has taken place now with the conflict in the Ukraine, which is not something we could have predicted at the beginning of the year.”

At their spring meetings in Washington in April, the IMF and World Bank radically downgraded their projections of global growth this year, because of the challenges related to the war, the uncertainties about supply chains, and increases in inflation. In April, the World Bank said global recovery is set to decelerate amid continued COVID-19 flare-ups, diminished policy support, and lingering supply bottlenecks. 

"The outlook is clouded by various downside risks, including new virus variants, unanchored inflation expectations, and financial stress," the World Bank said in its publication "Global Monthly".

“The question was, ‘What is COVID doing?’ but the bigger likely drain on our economic prospects this year will be the fallout of the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine. “And the longer that that conflict continues and the longer we have to ride this inflationary wave, the more it will have a negative impact on activity.”

He said rising inflation has caused the government to revise its budget for three major projects that are expected to drive economic recovery. The government must find US$62 million more for a new port in the capital, Kingstown, US$20 million for a new acute referral hospital and US$25 million for the Marriott hotel.

“Now, if you add all of that together, you realise you could build another hotel, another port, another set of schools. So there are challenges that come out of this inflationary spike for the government,” Gonsalves said, but noted that COVID-19 was driving prices up before the war. On the revenue side, there have not been any surprises. “Our revenue projections are holding at the moment, but we expect the challenges in the economy could affect local growth.” The government is trying to focus on the things it can control, including implementation of its construction projects, “because all of those projects will generate a certain amount of economic activity”.

The government also sees fisheries as extremely buoyant, and will invest US$4 million from an ALBA Bank loan to expand the fishing fleet. He said that the government reprogrammed a lot of its allocations in multilateral resources to help the country withstand either the pandemic or volcanic eruption. 

“So, the World Bank has a certain allocation of money that it will provide to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. And we had programmed that money in various projects," Gonsalves said.

"And when the volcano hit, and in the aftermath of COVID, we said, well, for example, the hospital, we took some of the money that was allocated to the hospital early, and we put it towards COVID. And we took some money that was allocated to an agricultural programme, and we put it towards responding to the volcano.” He said that multilateral donors and lenders, including the World Bank, Caribbean Development Bank, IMF, and Taiwan were able to assist SVG in riding out the downturn. “That extent of support will not be required now, for COVID because we're coming out of that downturn. The collapse of the tourism industry and the like, we don't need the extent of resources that we needed previously because those areas are not buoyant on their own.”

Multilateral borrowing this year is focused more on expenditure to help the economy grow., compared to loans in 2021 to help with income support and social programmes.

"The multilateral borrowings now are to build a hospital, to build a port and so we're hoping that what we get from multilateral this year, is not to hold things together, waiting for economic growth to return, but instead to ride the wave of growth, that that we are going to have.”

But the conflict in Ukraine remains a grave uncertainty. “Whether or not the ongoing conflict will evolve into something that we cannot manage of our own resources and for which we require international donor our lender assistance, it is too early for us to make that prediction at this point. So  I wouldn't be able to make that prediction.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves also noted that the economic forecast is not an exact science, noting that the economic recovery in the second half of 2021 “took care of the deep hole” in which the country found itself between April and July. “You have to really watch the data and analyse it carefully,” he said, noting that the COVID-19 related lockdown in Shanghai and other cities in China had deceased economic activity," the prime minister said. He noted that the lockdown had reduced the demand for oil, adding that global prices might have gone past US$120 a barrel “if China was on all cylinders. “Well, the 120 would be bad for us. But it's good for us if China is booming. I'm talking general theoretical proposition, how it will pan out in our neck of the woods — the detailed analysis.”

And, that is one of the lessons that Bramble, a first-term lawmaker, says the COVID-19 pandemic should teach St. Vincent and the Grenadines. "Our heavy dependence on imports, if we don't learn a lesson from COVID, for that, then something has to be really wrong with us," Bramble said.

"When I say us, as a nation, because now you realise that if you get into that situation, again, you're going to run into the problems of the supply chain being disrupted, a significant reduction in the supply of food, and other goods, essential goods and services, which we can produce right here. "

Bramble said the nation should look at the impact of the coronavirus pandemic as "the opportunity for us to empower the farmers, empower local small businesses, develop and promote value added agriculture. 

"So, don't just encourage the farmers to go and plant and then after that, what? Let us build factories let us build processing plants." He noted that the United States recently had problems with the supply of baby formula to the extent that President Joe Biden had to intervene.

Bramble noted that agricultural produce is the base ingredient of baby formula.

"We could capitalise on situations like those, and produce enough to export so that we reduce our balance of trade deficit and we no longer have to spend so much money to import." He said that an exhibition in Kingstown before the pandemic had showcased many of the things produced by local artisans, including handbags, body oils, and soaps. "And why do we have to import those and we could produce them right here," Bramble said. "So those are some of the opportunities that I think COVID has really created and it's for us to capitalise, but I believe that we need to really strengthen the partnership that is necessary for that to happen. "We can no longer afford to just have the government be the be all and end all to everything. And I think COVID has pointed that out quite clearly to us."

Kingstown, December 13, 2021 (MIC) -

Students in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, in November, returned to the physical classroom for the first time in almost a year and parents are apprehensive about commingling amidst the latest spike in COVID-19 cases. 

 As of December 7, St. Vincent and the Grenadines had recorded 5,623 cases of COVID-19, since March 2020. The country has recorded 76 deaths — 64 of which have occurred since September and 451 cases were active 

The pandemic as well as the eruption of La Soufriere volcano in April 2021, forced schools to remain closed until November. Schools have reopened under a “blended” model, a mixture of online and face-to-face classes, which sees particular groups of students alternating the days on which they go to the physical classroom.

 “COVID has impacted us in a very negative way. First of all, we don’t have the number of children that normally would come, particularly at this point in time — the younger children, the babies. The parents keep them at home because they are very much concerned about COVID and how you are going to take care of their children,” says Janice Fraser, director of VINSAVE.

 The 50-year-old non-profit organisation focuses on the development of children, youths, families and community through early childhood care, training parents and community development, and by influencing national policies for the benefit of its clients. 

 VINSAVE operates three early childhood centres that cater for children ages 6 months to 5 years old and has a holistic approach to early childhood development, focusing on learning through play.

 “Economically, it (the COVID-19 pandemic) has impacted our programme. It has also impacted on the way we operate, in terms of learning through play,” Fraser says. “We can’t take them outside as we would want to. We have to always be with them to ensure that their hands are washed, that they wear face masks and follow all the protocols. And it is very difficult to do that with a young child. How would you keep a preschooler away from his friends?”

 But amidst the challenges, Fraser says that VINSAVE ha not seen the pandemic having a negative impact on the development of children, as measured against an established, age-specific checklist.

 While children bring handheld devices to the centres, VINSAVE ensures they interact with each other. “We are fortunate in the sense that we have a lot of space so we are able to operate the groups. But in terms of activities, we try our best, even though we keep them apart, to ensure that they get the necessary simulation that we are accustomed to.”

 And this interaction has shown that the children understand what COVID-19 is. “They know it is there, so when you speak to them in terms of washing hands and things like that, they know. So, we keep that in the forefront.”

 Fraser, however, says that the interaction among the children also shows that some of them are stressed. “They fight and pinch up one another and so forth. They are more aggressive, they are not really free as they are used to when … they could run outside. But that is no more; you have to be cautious with that. So I think it is a concern really.”

 VINSAVE’s work is not confined to preschoolers, as it supervises some primary school students, who visit the centre so that they can access devices to attend online classes. Fraser expressed concern for children who lack supervision at home “in terms of their work and so forth.

 “So I wonder to myself what would happen to that group of children. Because parents work so they leave them at home to go on their devices (attend classes) and many of them don’t. We are seeing it even with the little ones that come to us.” 

‘Gaps at all levels’ of education 

 In the nation’s primary schools, the return to the physical classroom has been revealing for educators. 

 “We notice there are gaps at all levels in terms of the children’s education,” says one teacher, who requested anonymity so as to speak freely about the reality in schools without fear of sanctions from the Ministry of Education.

 “Some students were left behind in their learning, and for some of them in all the subject areas. The COVID pandemic also widened certain pre-existing [gaps] and that caused achievement gaps.”

 During the period that students were absent from the classroom, they continued their education online. However, teachers have found that some parts of the syllabi were not covered.

 “Most of the time, as teachers, we would take it for granted that the student ‘should know that’. But, in reality, because of COVID and all that has been happening  so far, it created serious achievement gaps for the students,” the educator said.

 In some instances, students have never attended the online classes, and others have returned to the physical classrooms eight weeks after they should have. 

 At the same time, some parents whose children attend the online classes and were promoted to a higher grade, feel that their children should repeat a year.

 “They feel that the children have not mastered certain skills and that promoting them would just compound the situation.”

 The view of the Ministry of Education, the educator suggests, is that while a student might have struggled during the worst of the pandemic, they can be remediated in the higher grade. “Sometimes, it is not done effectively and sometimes, they get no remedial work,” the teacher, however, says.

 A family’s economic situation also affects the quality of remedial education a child receives, as children from poorer families, who often need the most help in the form of private tutoring, can least afford it.

 Schools are battling with problems associated with students’ excitement to make new friends and connect with old ones at a time when physical distance is the new norm.

 And some parents are concerned that their children might catch COVID-19 in school.

 ‘Even though we encourage social distancing, some of the parents, they are on edge. They don’t want the children to touch this and touch that, which is [understandable]. But some of them are at the place where they are paranoid… Some of them are taking it to another level. Some parents are withholding the  children from coming to school, thinking that if they come to school, chances are that they would contract the COVID virus,” the educator said. 

 For some parents, the impact of the pandemic on household income has been such that they cannot afford to buy their children’s school books, the teachers said. 

 And, as parents struggle harder to make ends meet, more and more children are left unsupervised at home, and this is manifesting itself in behavioural problems at school. 

Primary schools have counsellors, but because of the many issues that have arisen because of the COVID-19 pandemic, counsellors are sometimes overwhelmed, the educator said. 

The pandemic and child abuse 

A major concern of the government is that unsupervised children could fall victim to sexual or other forms of abuse, even within their homes. Such reports are investigated by the Sexual Offences Unit of the Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force.

 An officer who is familiar with the work of the unit, asked not to be named in this report so as to speak freely, having not obtained the permission of higher ranks to speak to the media. 

 “The comparative number will not be available until later this month, but we have had reports where girls who were at home alone during this period and were sexually molested, sometimes by members of their household,” the officer says.

 In some instances, investigations were launched after children were seen viewing adult content on their hand-held devices. Sex crime investigator would try to determine the source of the content and whether any offences had been committed. 

 The officer says that reports are investigated and charges laid, accordingly. “We inform the Family Services Department, we get the parents and we conduct an investigation… In the event that the accused person is a family member living in the household, the Family Services will arrange for the child to be taken into the custody of the state.”

Psychological and educational ‘scaring’

 Meanwhile, Dr. Christian Anderson, a paediatrician, who has a private practice in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, noted the impact that the pandemic has had on the nation’s children in their of their physical .

 “There is an element of scaring for the last two years. Scaring means psychological and educational — meaning they were at home without education, without supervision, without learning, not to mention not socialising with their peers,” says Anderson, who has been practising medicine for about 40 years. 

 Anderson says there is also an element of sexual and other abuse of children that is endemic in all countries. “But it becomes very much prevalent when you have COVID,” he says, adding that this could especially be the case in circumstances where there is no proper functioning family structure. “These things get swept under the carpet.” 

 More obvious, he says, are instances of unwanted pregnancies. “These are the intangible things that do exist. Hard to measure, but we have that element of scaring for those two years.”

 The paediatrician says that the “return to the usual childhood infections” such as asthma, influenza, and and-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD) is an indication that there is more interaction among children.

 On December 1, the Ministry of Health said it was closely monitoring the current situation of HFMD as there had been increased reports of cases across the country.  

 Anderson says:

 “From this time last year when we had social distance and isolation, very few people got sick with colds and asthma. But now, when people understand the [novel coronavirus] better, people have returned to pre-school and primary school. Children will always be children. They play with each other and they get the cold and hand-foot-and-mouth disease, which is a viral infection. Those have returned but we had one full year of very minimal of what we call trivial infections.”

 He says there was not much data on COVID-19 infections among children “and we tend not to put swabs in children’s noses to find out if they are positive or not. But clinically, we would expect everyone to be catching a COVID infection just as much as others because we have community spread”.

 Anderson says that the good thing is that children generally do not get severely ill or die of COVID-19. He notes that in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, there has been no recorded case of a child dying of COVID-19.

 “There might be no deaths but there is rampant infection but it is not as well documented as would be in other countries. They get an infection but they don’t go to hospital unless they have COVID and asthma. COVID tends to exacerbate the asthma, if untreated.”  

 With the coming into effect, on November 19,  of the COVID-19 vaccination mandate for a wide cross-section of government workers in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, there has been an uptick in the number of doses administered.

 The Ministry of Health says that 55,950 doses, representing 23,388 second doses -- about 21% of the population -- and 31,696 first doses had been administered as of December 5. However, the disaggregated data, which could show how many children had taken the vaccine, were not released. 

 Vaccines are not currently required for children in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, although Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said in October that the country will need, among other things, to vaccinate 90% of its population 12 years and older to get the economy “back to a level of normalcy”.

 Anderson says that the level of vaccination among children is “not tremendous for the simple reason that children do not die [of COVID-19]. 

 “I sort of do not blame people but it is just that we are not going to get herd immunity unless most people are immunised or protected. And then people who are infected are not protected from a second or third infection…”

 The paediatrician further suggested that the government may, in time, make COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for children entering the school system, as is the case with a number of other vaccines. 

 “That might be a year or two before we reach there but we are still trying to get the adults vaccinated. We are behind in everything,” Anderson says.

Kingstown, october 8, 2021 (MIC) -

As the COVID-19 pandemic wears on, and as the yuletide season approaches, residents of St. Vincent and the Grenadines can expect to see significant increases in food prices.

 And, amidst the compounding challenges resulting from April’s eruption of La Soufriere volcano, the Ministry of Agriculture is “racing against time” to get vegetable and egg production to a stage where it could meet increased demand.

 “Since the National Emergency Management Organisation gave the green light [in August and September] to return to the Red and Orange zones, we have brought in significant quantities of seeds and we are actually racing against time,” Minister of Agriculture, Saboto Caesar said.

 “We have ordered the eggs; the baby chicks are going out. We have distributed the seeds; we are assisting with the construction of greenhouses. [Very soon], we will be approving and giving out loans probably in the tune of quarter million dollars to small farmers. We are giving out greenhouses, helping in the repairing of greenhouses...”

 The Minister said that from a production standpoint, St. Vincent and the Grenadines does not have a food security issue, although disruption of the food supply chain is the major impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the agriculture sector and food security in the region. “… we do not have a food security issue because of the variety and the quantities of commodities that we are growing in the country. But we have an issue whereby many consumers have a preference for imported goods. So that's a whole different issue.”

And it is this taste for imported food items that might cause consumers to see their purchasing power greatly reduced in the final quarter of the year, as COVID-19 impacts continue to cause food prices to skyrocket. 

“We are in for a rough ride in this last quarter of this year. I am hoping that the people in North America still send home money for their families this Christmas. We are trying our best to find prices that have kind of remained at the low end of the scale, but it is difficult,” one supermarket executive said. The executive asked for anonymity so as to speak candidly on the issue without fear of negative impact on his business.

 The higher prices are being driven by scarcity on the global market as well as the increasing cost of transportation of food items. However, the cost of food is also affected by a one-percentage-point increase in the customs service charge, a government levy that was increased to 6% on May 1.

 “The one-percentage-point increase at the port, when you divide it over the number of pounds in a case of a product, it does not seem like much -- if the prices had remained the same as nine months ago."

 “But, with all the different increases to get it here, if you were paying the one-percentage-point increase on $1, it was one cent. But now, if that product is costing you $1.15, $1.20 to import it, that has increased to one-point-sometime cents. It adds up,” the executive said.

 The increases on the cost of food begin at the point of order. “The first cost is up; the freight is up. The only thing in this equation that is not going up is people’s salary. Further, more people are not working, so sales are down. It is a worrying factor. I am worried about this next quarter. The cost of everything is going up. Certain products, when you order, they are not available anymore.”

 The executive’s comments seem to give credence to a warning issued by Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves, who, in late September, said that Vincentians will see that their wages and salaries are paying for less than they did a year ago, because of higher prices as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Finance Minister said that St. Vincent and the Grenadines can only have “some sense of normalcy in our internal economy, in our trade relations, and in our tourism economy, if we get some sense of normalcy with a vaccine, and with COVID. And until we do that, we’re going to be in serious trouble,” he said.

Some 13,556 people in St. Vincent and the Grenadines have taken a second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 20,830 had taken a first dose, while for a total of 34,386 vaccines administered. This compares to the 50,000 doses that the government had hoped to have administered by the end of March.

The Finance Minister, in his comments in September, further said:

“And I want to say also, to our friends who work in the labour movement, because of COVID internationally, globally, there are increases now in inflation, there are increases in the cost of shipping things, increases in the cost of delivering things to St. Vincent. Inflation will increase. 

And until we can get some sense of normalcy in our economy, we, the government, are not going to be able to give cost-of-living increases in salary.”

Much of the food that larger supermarkets import into St. Vincent and the Grenadines come from the Americas, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. The supermarket executive said that the cost of shipping a 40-foot container from the United Kingdom has increased by US$1,300, inclusive of a general rate increase and a peak season surcharge that came into effect on Oct. 1. In the United States, the peak-season surcharge of US$200 came into effect on Sept. 29. “However, there are some serious other charges tacked on to the containers because of a shortage of drivers. So they have added an extra US$200 for that.”

The executive said that pre-pandemic, container haulers would wait for one hour, without charge while a container was loaded. That free period has been reduced to 30 minutes and the drivers are now charging US$200 for every 30 minutes of wait time, which works out to about US$600 on every container. “That is what we are facing. They give you less time and there are different rates for different parts of the United States,” said the executive whose supermarket orders about 65% of its goods from the United States.

While ocean freight varies because of contracts with different lines, the additional cost outstrips any saving that these contracts might realise.  “So if you have a contractual rate for containers coming out of Savannah, Georgia, at US$4,500, the peak season surcharge and all the other expenses are tacked on. So you have a general rate increase  -- a GRI -- then it goes on to your contractual rates.”

 When the container arrives in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the supermarket pays duties on the cost of the goods, the insurance and the freight (CIF). “If your goods were costing $100 and the insurance was 1%, it’s now costing you $110. And then, the customs service charge has increased from 5% to 6%. It is an increase across the board,” the executive said.

 The executive noted that the government must raise money to carry out its functions, adding that the state is under stress now because of lower revenue in take. The GRI and peak-season surcharge should be on an extra bill so that the company does not pay duties on them, which it, in turn, has to pass on to consumers, thereby further driving up the price of food, the executive suggested.

 “If the government was collecting one cent on each dollar, they continue to collect that, rather than applying the tax to $1.10, as a consequence of the GRI and peak-season surcharge. It is the government that has to make that decision, not me.”

 To illustrate how the pandemic is affecting availability of food and driving prices up, the executive said that chicken back, a meat staple for the poorest of the nation’s poor, is scarce and the prices higher. “If you are importing it, the purchase price of chicken back is duty free. But that is so high now it’s cheaper to buy leg quarters, which have duty and consumption tax, though very little duty,” the executive explained.

 The supply of leg quarters has remained stable, but the price has increased. On the other hand, the supply of chicken wings has fallen by 25% while the price has increased because of the increased freight rates from the United Kingdom, the source market. “So we are going to start to see the heavy increase in prices. When I say heavy, five cents is heavy to the poor man. We will start to see it in the next month or so,” the executive said.

 The executive noted the Vincentian food tradition during the holiday season. This includes the consumption of picnic hams, the source price of which has increased by 20.8%, even as the supermarket prepares to make its first order of the season.  “That is an increase in the first cost. That is the CIF price,” the executive emphasised. “I am fighting with the supplier to give me a reduction before the container sails. Otherwise we are going to be in trouble.”

 Another commodity that is in heavy demand at Christmas time is eggs, which are produced locally, and, in the event of a shortfall, permits are given for importation.

The executive was unsure whether local suppliers would be able to meet demand, amidst a shortage of locally grown whole chickens, as result of the impact of the volcanic eruption.

 But what is sure is that the price of cooking oil has skyrocketed. “Cooking oil like it wants to rival gasoline prices. And it’s nothing we have control over,” the executive said.

 At one supermarket, corn oil is sold for US$28 per gallon, soya bean oil is US$21 per gallon and vegetable oil for US$21 per gallon. After the most recent increase that came into effect on Oct. 1, Vincentians are paying US$5.20 per gallon of gasoline, almost twice the price one year earlier.

 Another cost is the rising cost of wheat and the impact it could have on the production of flour locally, a main ingredient for bread, a stable item.

 The agriculture minister said this could also have implications for the price of animal feed, eggs and other items along the value chain.

“I am following very closely with the ministry, the exorbitant increases in prices for shipping, especially coming from Asia. … And if this trend in the increase in the cost of shipping continues, it is going to have a knock on impact and it can cause a rise in food prices, not only St. Vincent and the Grenadines but in the entire region,” Caesar said.

Kingstown, August 12, 2021 (MIC) -

The road to mandatory vaccination

 The St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) Parliament, on Aug. 6 amended the Public Health Act making the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for certain “frontline workers”. These frontline workers are to be determined by regulations established by Cabinet.

 The change was passed into law around 3 a.m., after a marathon meeting of the National Assembly, which began the previous day. The move to make the vaccines mandatory also saw a massive protest organised by the main opposition party, the New Democratic Party and several unions and groups.

 The lengthy meeting and protest action would enter the annals of history as it was during the protest that Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves was injured when he was struck in the head by an object, allegedly thrown by a protester.

 “This amendment requires certain frontline workers to be vaccinated in the public interest,” Minister of Health St. Clair “Jimmy” Prince argued when he presented the bill, “Of course, we have been hearing all throughout about rights and whose rights we want to take away. But we are not hearing the other part: whose rights are being infringed as a result of the monopoly which some people think they have on rights,” the Minister said. 

 This amendment is “yet another aspect” of the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Minister opined as he said the pandemic threatens to “derail completely our social and economic situation in the islands. 

 The government argued that the change in the 1977 Public Health Act was necessary to eliminate any ambiguity that resulted from an amendment passed in April 2020. 

 The section of the law amended in 2020, clearly spoke of a “voluntary” immunisation programme. The original law also allowed a person to be exempted from treatment of or test for a communicable disease, based on medical grounds or conscience -- largely interpreted to mean religious belief.

 The new section, approved on Aug. 6, removed the conscience provision and only allows for exemptions where a medical practitioner acceptable to the medical officer of health certifies in writing that the medical treatment of the disease is not advisable on the medical grounds or grounds stipulated in the certificate. 

 The new section also gives the Chief Medical Officer power to require the person claiming an exemption to submit to an examination by one or more medical practitioners to determine whether the person should be granted the exemption on the medical ground or ground stipulated.

 Leader of the Opposition, Godwin Friday, took strong objections to the change to the law. He believes vaccination as the only way out of the pandemic, the government’s approach was wrong. 

 “Where are we? In North Korea? This can’t be right,” Friday said during the parliamentary the debate. 

 “I understand the seriousness of the problem (COVID-19). But that is why fundamental rights are protected,” Friday pointed out, “It is so that they are not easily dispensed with when there are difficult decisions to be made. And the problem … is a serious one, but I don’t believe this is the solution,” Friday told Parliament before the government used its majority to pass the bill.

 In 2020, when Friday and the NDP endorsed vaccination as the main weapon against the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the first time, since August 2016, that the opposition agreed on a major national policy in common with Gonsalves’  Unity Labour Party administration.

 However, the opposition leader said that his party’s view is that while it supports vaccination, it opposes mandatory vaccination, as people should be allowed to come to that conclusion on their own -- as he did before taking the jab in February -- rather than being forced or pressured.

 As Parliament convened on Aug. 5, hundreds took to the streets in capital Kingstown, expressing their objections to the law.  

 Among the protesters were nurses, customs officers and other public sector workers, some in uniform, a scene that had not been seen in SVG for two decades.

  “I am a nurse, I have conscience, I am also a child of God. And right is right and wrong is wrong. Our right to freedom is something that is God-given and should not be taken by anybody,” said an off-duty staff nurse who wore her uninform to the demonstration to register her objection to the change in the law.

The nurse feels that the amendment would deprive her of that right. 

“Not only me but my patients and my family,” the nurse said, adding that she was not afraid of repercussion for participating in the protest. “God’s got my back. Whatever is to come, I know I will be better. It can’t get worse than this.” 

Another protestor is a teacher, “I am not an anti-vaxxer, by any means, but on I just don’t believe that vaccines should be forced on those who don’t want to take it. And if you respect the choices for those who chose to take it, then those who chose not to take it should get the same respect.”

Asked if she does not get a transfer to a post where vaccines are not required whether she would take the jab, the teacher said she would cross that bridge “when we get to it”.

Vaccine hesitancy

 Vaccine hesitancy appears to be deeply entrenched in SVG as evidenced by the low uptake of the Sputnik V vaccine so far.

 The Prime Minister said he had heard that some people had said that they would take the Russian jab -- as opposed to AstraZeneca which has been available for some time -- as it was the one Gonsalves, his wife, Eloise, and other senior government officials had taken in February, before vaccines were widely available to the population.

 However, in the first two weeks after 50,000 doses of Sputnik V arrived in SVG on July 13, just over 1,048 doses had been administered, forcing the health minister to acknowledge that people were “not exactly rushing” to take the jab.

 As at Aug. 11, 25,834 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in SVG, translating to 15,799 first doses and 10,035 second doses.  Since March 11, 2020, the country has recorded 2,307 cases of the virus, 43 of which remained active, while 12 people have died of COVID-19.

 Infectious disease specialist, Dr Jerrol Thompson, who is an advisor to the COVID-19 Taskforce, pointed out that there are a range of reasons for this hesitancy.

 Some people feel that the vaccine was developed too quickly, while others “are scared from all of the things they have been hearing about,” he explained. 

 “I think it is clear now, coming out of what has been happening in the United States that there are shadow groups that are actually being paid, being recruited to push and promote this sort of activity.”

 Meanwhile, the Opposition Leader blamed a lack of trust in the government for citizens’ attitude to vaccination.

 The government “has mishandled this so badly that now there is absolutely no trust in the people as to anything that is said,” Friday said. 

 “And I am going to say it because I believe it is safe for our country. You can’t just simply say because you don’t trust Ralph that you say that you can’t trust the science,” he told listeners to his weekly radio show on July 12.

 The opposition leader urged citizens to “educate themselves properly” about the COVID-29 vaccine.

 “We have had a lot of time now to deal with it,” he said, noting the devastating impact of the delta variant on parts of the Caribbean.

 The Health minister, in addressing Parliament on July 8, summarised the challenge:

 “I heard a leader of an organization here, describing vaccines as an experimental drug. That, in itself, tells you the story as to what is happening in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.”

Herd immunity

 Thompson said that SVG is hoping to achieve herd immunity by vaccinating 70% of its population.

 He noted that this is not an arbitrary figure, adding that each virus, especially contagious viruses, have what we call an R number -- the R0, also called a  reproduction number.

 “… with COVID, the R0 has been 2.6, almost 3…  It is a complex formula we use and you do the formula, it comes up to between 65 and 70% of people must be vaccinated to prevent the virus from walking … and spreading through everybody.”

 Thompson said that COVID-19 vaccines have been proven to be up to 95% effective in preventing transmission and serious illness.

 “The vaccines around the world are working. That’s why you are hearing that 99% of the people who are coming down with the COVID-19 are the unvaccinated persons.”

 He, however, acknowledged that up to 3% of vaccinated people will contract COVID-19.

 “But usually, if they do get a breakthrough infection it is usually just a runny nose, a little sneezing, headache or a little sore throat. That’s it,” Thompson said.

One of the recurring themes among people hesitant about taking the vaccines is that they have only received emergency authorisation by the World Health Organisation. 

 However, the Sputnik V had not even received such authorisation, a point that Thompson, a former minister of science and technology under the Gonsalves administration, tried to downplay.

  “Let me say, it does not always require WHO approval,” he said, adding that the four vaccines developed in China do not require WHO approval for distribution. “WHO wants to approve certain vaccines if they are going to use them in the COVAX system. So if they are going to distribute them in COVAX, they will do that.”

 COVAX is co-led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi -- Gavi is coordinating the development and implementation of the COVAX Facility -- and the World Health Organization (WHO), alongside key delivery partner UNICEF. Its aim is to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines, and to guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world.

 “Unfortunately, among vaccines that the COVAX can give, you can only get about 20, 25% of what you need,” Thompson explained.

 “What we were promised was always [vaccines for] just 20% of our population, in terms of what we need. So in the different spheres of the world, you will realise that different countries make drugs, make vaccines, make other types of medication and they are approved within their sphere.”

 He said that the United States will never approve the Sputnik V or any of the vaccines produced by China. “They don’t need to.  They already have vaccines there. And that’s why they haven’t approved even the AstraZeneca,” Thompson said.

 But Dr. Malcolm Samuel, a Trinidad based Vincentian breast and general surgeon and renal transplantation specialist suggests that there are simply things that Kingstown can do to aid its vaccination programme.

 Recently, the government reversed its policy of allowing fully vaccinated people entering the country to quarantine at a government-approved hotel at, at the traveller’s expense, for 48 hours.  

 Now, people arriving in the country have to quarantine for seven days.

 “What I am saying is, if we are giving the message that vaccination is good and is desirable, then I think there should be some way of saying if you are coming in, fully vaccinated, negative PCR we do your PCR and it is good, you are good to go…

 “If we are not treating those people who are vaccinated in a certain way, then it’s difficult to convince somebody who is unvaccinated. Then why should I bother, I could just stay in my little corner…'” Samuel said. 

Kingstown, june 24, 2021 (MIC) -

Since its first case of COVID-19 on March 11, 2020, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as of June 22, 2021 has confirmed 2,207 cases of the illness.

 Of these cases, 1,941 have recovered, 254 remain active, and 12 people have died.

 The country’s response to the pandemic has focused on the early detection and isolation of cases, testing, and more recently, vaccination, as a means of curbing the spread of the virus.

 This is captured under the rubric “Hands. Face. Space. Vaccinate” -- frequent hand-washing, the wearing of facial coverings, physical distancing and vaccination.

 No “lock down” or curfew has been enforced, but the government has passed laws to limit to 10 the number of people permitted at an indoor gathering. Outdoor gatherings have been limited to 20 people, and funerals, which were traditionally held in the afternoon, ending at dusk, must now, but law, begin no later than 11 a.m. and cemeteries close at 3 p.m.

 The wearing of face masks in public places or places to which the public has access is a legal requirement. Public places are interpreted to mean confined spaces and do not include the streets, parks, beaches, etc.

Vaccination campaign 

 On March 3, 2021 the government ramped up its COVID-19 vaccination drive.

 The country has received 20 doses of Sputnik-V, 5,000 doses of AstraZeneca from the Government of Dominica, 40,000 doses from the Government of India, through the COVAX facility and a further 21,600, also through COVAX.

 The government has emphasised that vaccination is one of the most important public health interventions it can make with respect to the pandemic.

 Health authorities had hoped that within a month of the March 3, 2021 ramping up of the campaign, that at least 50,000 people would have taken the vaccine.

 However, as of June 22, only 24,290 doses of the vaccines have been administered.

 The vaccination campaign has been affected by deep-seated vaccination hesitancy and distrust.

 In addition to the low-vaccination uptake, health officials are also battling a steep fall in the voluntary demand for testing.

 The Government has announced a policy that all employees of the central government who are unvaccinated must be tested up to once every two weeks, at the expense of the worker.

 This policy is hugely unpopular with the Public Service Union, the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Teachers’ Union, and the Police Welfare Association, the labour rights organisations that represent the majority of the nation’s public sector workers.  The union says that the policy is another attempt by the government to force vaccination.

 Health officials have asked the Cabinet to consider a lottery, mobile phone credit giveaway, and shopping discounts for persons who are vaccinated against COVID-19.

Management of the Pandemic

 The Government has established a taskforce to manage the novel coronavirus pandemic. The St. Vincent and the Grenadines Coronavirus Task Force was established in keeping with the National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) Act. The taskforce falls under the Health Service Sub-Committee of NEMO and is chaired by the Chief Medical Officer. 

 The taskforce also includes the Registrar, Community Health Services; the Medical Officer of Health; The health Promotion Unit of the Ministry of Health; The Health Disaster Management Unit of the Ministry of Health; the Chief Pharmacist; Epidemiologists in the Ministry of Health, and an infectious disease specialist, who acts as an advisor to the taskforce. 

The Taskforce and the Private Sector

 Consultations with the private sector were done through the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (CIC).

 The CIC, its Executive Director, Anthony Regisford, notes, is not legally a part of the taskforce. However, the CIC has been consulted on matters that might affect businesses and commerce in the country.

 One of the biggest issues that might impact the private sector is vaccination and the policies or lack of clear direction regarding the idea of mandatory vaccination.

 One of the questions, Regisford says, is: “What does a private sector entity do to protect itself, in its own judgement, where it sees conditions of work should mandate that people are vaccinated?”

 In answering that question, the private sector is trying to get clarity on the implications of terminating a worker who refuses to get vaccinated, even as a single COVID-19 infection in the business could shut it down for weeks -- say at a bakery.

 Regisford said:

 “We understand that within the present Employment Protection Act you can sever the person. But that severance requires severance pay and that is the grey area. I think that is the biggest area that is plaguing the private sector right now: getting clarity on that.”

 The private sector was part of the cooperative effort in getting people vaccinated, by arranging with the Ministry of Health to have health workers go to business places to vaccinate staff who so desired.

 Some private sector entities have been more involved in the vaccination drive, in that they have offered incentives to their workers or make the conditions comfortable or conducive for pop-up vaccination stops, Regisford says.

 A level of cooperation and dialogue between the private sector and the taskforce has achieved all of this. So while the private sector is not, legally, a component of the taskforce, it is always in the conversation about COVID-19 and COVID-19 related issues.

The Media and the Pandemic

 Non-state owned or non-state-influenced media entities have taken, generally, a journalistic approach to covering the pandemic, including much of the false or questionable narratives about it.

 However, the government has encouraged the news media to help in the fight against the “infodemic”, as Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves calls the “false information, fake news, misinformation” that he says is driving vaccine hesitancy.

 The government has retained the services of a consultant in helping to craft and communicate its messages about the pandemic and the response to it.

Face masks face-off

In January 2021, amidst a spike in cases locally, the CIC called on the government to make the wearing of face masks in public places mandatory.

 The CIC said this would be helpful to their operations in the prevailing COVID-19 environment.

 Regisford reasoned then that a mandatory order could assist, although he acknowledged there was no guarantee people would fall into line.

 At the time, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said that his government preferred to use persuasion and public education to encourage persons to adopt the practice.

 The prime minister said that such a measure could be difficult to police.

 However, since then, a law has been passed mandating the wearing of face masks in public places or places to which the public has access. Under the law, “public places” is generally interpreted to mean indoor public spaces or spaces to which the public has access, which would include business places.

Response to the ‘crisis’

 Unlike the government, which sees the pandemic as a “challenge”, the CIC sees it as a “crisis”. Regisford says that the pandemic is “an existential matter for the private sector”. Therefore, businesses do whatever they have to in order to stay afloat.

Then, it is not a question of cooperating with the taskforce or the government because it is an obligation. The private sector sees the pandemic as a survival matter.

 “It is a business decision, first and foremost,” Regisford says. “There are some who will tell you it is for good of country and all of that, but at the centre of it, it is an existential matter. So I don’t think there is a problem there. No private sector entity wants to close.”

 He notes that the CIC was opposed to a lockdown and pushed for the mandatory wearing of face masks as it felt that there had not been enough policing of the protocols.

 “We are very much militant about the fight against COVID-19 because it is an existential matter. I think we have taken more than our fair share of responsibility.”

Kingstown, March 31, 2021 (MIC) -

St. Vincent and the Grenadines recorded its first case of COVID-19 on March 11, 2020. The first recorded case was imported from the United Kingdom and its detection also coincided with the WHO’s declaration of the novel coronavirus as a pandemic. As of April 5th, 2021 St Vincent had recorded seventeen hundred and sixty-five (1765) COVID-19 cases and
10 deaths. Since our last report, with the exception of an outbreak at the country’s Mental Health facility, positivity rate has remained steady ranging from 1-5 %. There are one hundred and twenty-eight active cases at present.

VACCINATION CAMPAIGN

The Government embarked on an ambitious mass vaccination the biggest of its kind ever in the country. This has been stymied by a significantly low uptake and vaccine hesitancy. Government received an initial gift of the Russian Sputnik V vaccines which were used to get the programme off the ground. This was further complemented by five thousand AstraZeneca vaccines donated by the Government of the Commonwealth of Dominica and a further forty thousand from the Government of India.

 Uptake has been slow with just over eleven thousand persons taking the jab in spite of an elaborate public education and marketing programme. The target is to vaccinate at least seventy percent of the population or about seventy thousand people, to achieve community immunity. Government has made it clear that it will not allow the vaccines which have a shelf life to ‘spoil.’ The Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has indicated that he will offer the vaccines to his CARICOM counterparts who may need them.

SPENDING 

Since the advent of the country’s first COVID-19 case, a package of fiscal stimulus and tax relief in the amount of EC $70 million, or in excess of 3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was announced. The package comprises a plan of temporary, targeted and proportionate measures designed to:

1- “Protect health and preserve the lives of citizens

2-Strengthen the social safety net to protect the vulnerable and

3-Keep the economy ticking over as much as possible.”

 Th bulk of the revenue for the package are from six main sources, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Bank of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

 The Government reports that more than 30,000 Vincentians have been directly touched by the Recovery and Stimulus Package. Over 14,000 were most directly affected by Government interventions to the tune of $20m. The spending includes: fourteen thousand and twenty-four persons (14,024) including seamen, farmers, vendors, the vulnerable include women, taxi and tour bus operators and minibus operators, cultural and creative professionals benefitted from supplementary income support, social support, fertilisers and livestock.

 Students and teachers (17,000) received $5.53 million worth of tablets/computers to facilitate distance learning and 2,423 took advantage of loan moratoria offered by local banks. All these account for a total of 33,347 impacted persons at a value of $25.85 when added to the previous set of beneficiaries.

 Other interventions adding up to $15.28m for purchase of materials for the “Love Boxes,” (an initiative which saw households receiving fresh food and produce from Government) temporary hiring of nurses and doctors, laboratory supplies, cleaning and sanitisation supplies etc.

 Infrastructure projects including the COVID-19 Isolation Center, PAVE Footpath, Enhancement of Government Buildings, Community Infrastructure and Road Rehabilitation Programme account for spending to the tune of $13.03m.

 The combined total of these interventions to date, is $54m.

 In its 2021 budget of EC$1.2b in estimated revenue and expenditure, there was a projected current account deficit of $51m, as a result of COVID-19 related economic shocks. EC$3m have been budgeted for COVID vaccinations and dengue eradication. Six hundred additional beneficiaries of increased social assistance in response to COVID-19 have also been earmarked and budgeted for.

 The Government has acknowledged that the fallout from COVID-19 has been tangible, as businesses have closed and jobs have disappeared. It notes that:

“Preliminary data suggest that the Gross Domestic Product of St. Vincent and the Grenadines will contract between 2.2 and 5.0 per cent, depending on whether one places more stock in estimates from the IMF, ECCB, World Bank, ECLAC or Ministry of Finance. By any measure, the projected decline is by far the least severe economic response in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union. The decline in the Vincentian economy to date, though significant, is less calamitous than almost every other CARICOM member state.”

Kingstown, February 28, 2021 (MIC) -

St. Vincent and the Grenadines recorded its first case of COVID-19 on March 11, 2020. The first recorded case was an imported one from the United Kingdom. Its detection also coincided with the WHO’s declaration of the novel coronavirus as a pandemic. By February 23rd, 2021 following a surge during the period December 28th, 2020 to January 28th, 2021, St Vincent had recorded fifteen hundred and twenty-six cases (1526) of COVID-10 and six (6) deaths.

 Within weeks of the announcement of the country’s first COVID-19 case, Prime Minister Dr Ralph E Gonsalves announced a package of fiscal stimulus and tax relief in the amount of EC $70 million, or in excess of 3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

 Gonsalves announced then that the bulk of the revenue for the package will come from six sources, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Bank of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the Contingency Fund of the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines as well as other financial institutions, and bondholders. He said that the monies from these sources are either in hand or at hand and that support will also come from the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB), the National Insurance Services (NIS) and the Eastern Caribbean Group of Companies as well as other locally based financial and other companies.

 He expressed the hope that many international friends and allies will assist us in one way or another as the country expands and consolidates its socio-economic recovery in the post-COVID-19 period. The Prime Minister outlined that expenditure of the revenue garnered for the economic recovery and stimulus plan will focus on health initiatives including the construction of Isolation Unit and associated facilities; equipment, supplies, materials, drugs; hiring of additional nurses and medical interns; accommodation, food transportation and associated expenses for 12 Cuban nurses and four doctors, specialists in handling infectious diseases.

 Funds would also go towards the immediate generation of jobs in public works and direct support in the areas of farming, animal husbandry and fishing.

 Prime Minister Gonsalves said also that funds would be used to support vulnerable and affected persons including displaced workers in the hotel and tourism sector, cruise buses and taxis, through a Displacement Supplementary Income for three months in the first instance.

 WORLD BANK -April 2020

 The World Bank activated US$4.5 million to provide immediate funding for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic, aimed at strengthening the capacity of the health system.  

 The financing will be used to improve the ability to: 

•  isolate patients;

•  increase testing capacity;

• and purchase critical supplies.

 These include personal protective equipment, mobile isolation units, testing equipment, reagents, gloves, and masks. It will also support preparedness and response capacity for other public health emergencies by increasing access to medical equipment and expanding the capacity of hospitals.

 These funds were mobilized under the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Regional Health Project using the Contingency Response Component (CERC).

 Source: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/04/21/world-bank-provides-45-million-to-support-saint-vincent-and-the-grenadines-covid-19-emergency-response

 INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (IMF) 

 The International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a disbursement to
St. Vincent and the Grenadines following a request under the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) mechanism, for US$16 million, to help cover its balance of payment and fiscal needs stemming from the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

 IMF support will help cover some of these needs’ relative to a drop in fiscal revenues, combined with additional direct health and social expenditures, and allow the government to ease the impact on the population.

 Source:  https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/05/20/pr20221st-vincent-and-the-grenadines-imf-exec-board-approves-disbursement-to-adress-covid19

 PAN AMERICAN HEALTH ORGANISATION (PAHO) -Dec. 2020

 St. Vincent and the Grenadines received a PAHO donation to continue the mission of safeguarding health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and assist with managing the dengue outbreak. the donated items were valued at US$264,472.63 and include: 

• 4 Desktops for Surveillance

• 23 A/C Units: For the Dental Unit, Laboratory Services & Health Disaster Coordinating Unit

• 1 Laptop and 6 tablets for Adolescent Health

• IT Equipment for the Molecular Lab

• Thermometers, face shields and batteries provided for school reopening

• IT Equipment for Health the Psychology Unit for children with special needs

• Vector Supplies including Thermal Foggers

• IT Equipment for the Nutrition Unit

• Developmental Toys for Children with Special Needs

• PCR Tests Kits (1000 reactions)

• 2 defibrillators

• 5 oxygen concentrators

• Dialysis Machine and Supplies in support of dengue response and maintaining essential services

Additional equipment and supplies, were due for delivery before the end of 22020, include:

• Vital signs monitors

• Intravenous Infusion pumps

• Laptops and tablets

 According to the organization: “these deliverables are in addition to those plans to be implemented by PAHO under the St. Vincent and the Grenadines $1 Million Pandemic Emergency Financing (PEF) fund.

 PAHO is also providing support to St. Vincent and the Grenadines and other PAHO member states to access the COVID-19 vaccines from the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility through the PAHO Revolving Fund.

 Source:  https://www.paho.org/en/news/12-12-2020-paho-gives-st-vincent-grenadines-boost-aid-covid-19-fight