Experts’ call
Lee Issa sides with docs against Stewart’s COVID mandate pullback
Published:Tuesday | February 8, 2022 | 12:12 AMKimone Francis/Senior Staff Reporter
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Hotel mogul Adam Stewart does not have the backing of his counterparts in his campaign for the lifting of travel restrictions and mandates imposed by the Government to limit the spread of the coronavirus. In a Gleaner interview on Monday, Couples...
Hotel mogul Adam Stewart does not have the backing of his counterparts in his campaign for the lifting of travel restrictions and mandates imposed by the Government to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
In a Gleaner interview on Monday, Couples Resorts Chairman Lee Issa said matters of health and science must be left up to the experts, declaring that the current protocols continue to lessen the impact COVID-19 has on the population.
So, too, said country manager for Bahia Principe, Brian Sang, though he argued that daily curfews must become a thing of the past.
Stewart, chairman of Sandals Resorts International, stoked a social-media backlash after apparently attempting to steer policymakers towards a rollback of COVID-19 protocols, stressing that economic and social costs have been colossal.
The hotelier has also been critical of Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton, who has urged the 21 per cent of Jamaicans vaccinated to shun those who have refused the COVID-19 jab.
“I just watched a video where the minister of health publicly stated he plans to discriminate against the overwhelming majority of Jamaican citizens who have made a personal choice. What happened to Out of Many, One People?” Stewart wrote on Twitter Sunday, referencing Jamaica’s motto.
He suggested, also, that the mask mandate for children was unhealthy and questioned the need for its continuation.
But Issa insists that the determination if, and when, coronavirus mandates should be lifted ought to rest with epidemiologists and other health experts.
He believes that the pandemic may be nearing its end with the prevalence of the fast-spreading but milder Omicron variant.
“We are going to recover and I think we’re in recovery mode. A lot of Jamaicans are headed towards herd immunity. A lot of them might have had COVID and didn’t know they had COVID and they have recovered.”
Issa said Jamaica’s death rate, when compared to the United States’, which has a greater vaccination rate, suggests that the protocols and mandates have done the job.
He said while the hospitality sector has been rocked by lockdowns and travel restrictions, things are on the mend.
The Couples Resorts chairman told The Gleaner that fallout ensued after warnings of the then emergent Omicron variant, triggering mass cancellations of bookings. But he said that the projections are looking positive for March and onwards.
“It has really crippled the hospitality business like so many other businesses. I am anxious to see it come to an end, but I will leave it up to the experts. I don’t expect a doctor to come and tell me how to run my hotel business,” said Issa.
“I’m sure Dr Tufton and Prime Minister Holness and Ed Bartlett are just as anxious to have it come to an end so that we can get more tourists in the island to build up our reserves and help the economic development of the country, but at the same time you don’t want to create a situation where you go against the scientists and then you have a backlash that would shut us down again for another six months.”
Like Issa, Sang said he remains in support of the ministry’s protocols, although the industry has been struggling for the past two years.
He said while mask mandates, gathering limits, sanitisation practices, and negative tests for tourists are “sufficient” and should remain in place, curfews present a roadblock to economic recovery and should be discontinued.
“Twenty-one per cent of the population has been vaccinated and we realise that this number is not moving. Can we remain like this with the economy being closed? Absolutely not,” Sang charged.
He told The Gleaner that the time has come to open the economy and for Jamaicans to learn to coexist with COVID-19.
Opposition Spokesperson on Tourism, Senator Janice Allen, in the meantime, said Tufton’s call for vaccinated Jamaicans to be discriminatory is unacceptable.
“I understood where he was coming from, and I understood why he would feel compelled to go in that direction, but certainly my view, I maintain, is that we want to encourage and reiterate as much as possible, educate Jamaicans as much as possible, showing them the science and the importance of being vaccinated,” Allen said during a tour of development projects taking place in Port Royal on Monday.