The Cayman Islands is leading the Caribbean region with its rate of COVID-19 vaccination heading towards half of the estimated population of 65,000 receiving at least one dose.
Chief Medical Officer, Dr John Lee reported on Tuesday that, “So far, 27,945 (43% of the estimated population) have received at least one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, with 22% having completed the two-dose course.”
In all to date to date, 42,115 doses of the vaccine have been administered in Cayman.
This puts the jurisdiction’s vaccination programme to date ahead of the other three Caribbean countries leading with their campaigns by comparison.
The Turks and Caicos Islands, Antigua & Barbuda and Barbados were at 30 per cent, 25 per cent and 21 per cent respectively, according to statistics from the past week.
A further 63,000 doses of the Pfizer-BionTech vaccine are due by April 7th from the British government.
With that shipment, Cayman will have received over 100,000 doses “which is enough to vaccinate the entire adult population of 50,000 people in Cayman,” HE Governor Martyn Roper recently stated.
The United Kingdom continues to be the global leader in vaccinations with half of the adult UK population receiving at least a first dose of either the Prizer-BionTech or the Oxford-Astra-Zeneca, including 95 per cent of people over 60 years old.
In the United States, President Joe Biden has achieved a goal of vaccinating 100 million people in his first 100 days in office, doing so within two months.
Meanwhile, in Cayman, testing for the virus continues with 353 COVID-19 tests results on Tuesday all returning negative from samples taking over the previous day.
That was a significant change from the seven positive results out of 647 tests since Friday March 19th.
Those persons were travellers who tested positive following routine screening and have been placed in isolation following standard protocols.
From this week the quarantine period for all fully vaccinated returning residents and workers returning to the jurisdiction are only required to quarantine for 10 days, down from the previous 14-day period.
The government's travel coordinating agency, Travel Cayman, has advised travellers that they will be required to present their original vaccine certificate for authentication.
"In cases where a person intends to quarantine at a residence with non-travellers, everyone who will be in isolation with the traveller will be required to provide a vaccination certificate to be eligible for the reduced quarantine period. If eligible, the entire household will be required to quarantine for a minimum period of ten days.”
Travellers are still be required to present a negative PCR test taken within 72-hours of travel and also test negative upon arrival in Cayman.
Family members travelling with unvaccinated children will need to remain in isolation for 14-days, even if the adults are vaccinated.
The number of people in isolation, either at a government facility or in their homes by Tuesday, was 728.
Meanwhile, the British government is introducing strict restrictions on travel out of the UK from March 29th with persons needing to provide a valid reason for leaving the country.
Anyone caught breaking the new rules could face fines up to £5,000.
However, it was not expected to affect Caymanian students in the UK as one of the provisions allows "to return to your home country for a vacation between 29 March and 29 April if you’re a foreign student studying in the UK."
Others are advised to carefully review the travel restrictions to see what applies to them.
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