Opposition get their boosters

By Christopher Tobutt

Leader of the Opposition, Roy McTaggart rolled up his sleeve for his vaccination booster shot at the Lions Centre on Thursday 28 October. The H.S.A has made the booster shots available, free of charge, to anyone who is over the age of 50, or considered vulnerable due to some other medical reason. There should be a 6-month gap between the second vaccination (leading to ‘fully vaccinated status,’) and the booster shot.

“I think it’s important that everyone becomes fully vaccinated as quickly as we can do so. Vaccinations are the only real way we can protect the country and protect our people from the debilitating effects of the virus, and I think it just behooves everyone to take their vaccinations and make sure they’re protected,” Mr. McTaggart said. “One of the things I am doing here this morning and I hope people will appreciate is we are leading by example, in coming together here in order to show Cayman that we are not only pro-vaccine, and pro-booster-shots, but taking it ourselves.”

George Town MPs Barbara Conolly, David Wight, and Alden McLaughlin were there too, filling in the forms on the cards which are issued to everyone who takes the booster jab. Whatever differences the Government and the Opposition might have, they are all singing off the same page when it comes to being pro-vaccination as the only real way forward for the country.

“I’m here today to take my booster jab,” said Ms. Conolly, “The importance of the booster is to protect us, and to keep us safe, and I would encourage more and more of my constituents as well as the people of the Cayman Islands as a whole to come out and take the booster. At the end of the day it’s to keep us all safe, and to keep this virus from spreading.”

Mr. Wight had a good, real-life example to tell about the vaccine’s effectiveness: “My brother and his wife went to visit her family in Virginia, and he was there, with them in the same house for a week. The grandparents started to feel ill, and they went and took a Covid test, and it turned out that they had Covid. But my brother had no symptoms, because he had taken the vaccination, but all the others who were feeling ill hadn’t had the vaccination.”

Opposition Leader Mr. McTaggart said he hadn’t got a problem with the Government’s plans to open up the country on 20 November, saying: “We have told the Government and told the country that we have to reopen, but we have to do so in as safe a manner as possible. And the safest way to do that is to make sure people are vaccinated. I think it’s important that all the services that we rely on, whether its education, health, or other services such as police, everybody is ready for us to reopen,” he added.