Roberts: I think it’s a good idea, but I don’t think we can entice people who haven’t taken it yet to do so
NASSAU, BAHAMAS – Super Value owner Rupert Roberts said while he had offered a space for the Ministry of Health to facilitate a vaccination center, the government appeared keener for the food store franchise to adopt a Walgreens approach where employees and customers could get vaccinated while in-store.
“They want to send a nurse in and have several chairs and see if the staff and the public will take it,” Roberts told Eyewitness News.
“I mean, they can do an experiment and if it works, then they can use all of the stores in major locations — east, west, north, south.
“I think it’s a good idea, but I don’t think the people who haven’t taken it so far, I don’t think we can entice them to take it.”
Roberts said if all of the information on the vaccine was fed into one source, he believes more people would step forward to inoculate against the virus.
“There is a big controversy over the vaccine with the public and you can sense that,” he said.
In most states in the United States, Walgreens, CVS locations within Target stores, Walmart, Kroger and other major pharmacies offer COVID-19 vaccinations in-store.
This week, Walgreens began offering a $25 store credit for a limited period to anyone who got vaccinated for the first time at one of its pharmacy locations.
Asked how many staff at Super Value have taken the vaccine, Roberts said: “Very few. They’re not taking it. We can’t entice them to take it. I think they state confusion — there is too much confusion, too much misinformation and they’re actually afraid of it.”
Super Value employees around 1,100 staff.
At last report, 79,000 people in The Bahamas have been vaccinated.
Blocked from the outside
But Roberts said in order for tourists to return and continue visiting, vaccinations must go up.
He questioned whether tourists will desire to come to a country where only 18 percent of its population is vaccinated.
“That is going to become a problem eventually,” the businessman said.
“It has to; you can almost see it coming down the pipe.
“If we keep having the cases, we’ll get locked down from outside.
“All our tourists are from the US. If tourists issue a warning or something stronger than a warning, they can say Americans cannot visit The Bahamas, or if we were to have really bad waves and we could get a variant that spreads a lot quicker, that even a first shot of AstraZeneca may not work anymore.”
The Bahamas remains on the United Kingdom’s orange list, for example.
It means a visitor from the UK who returns home from The Bahamas must quarantine for 10 days, as opposed to being allowed to freely return as is the case for countries on its green list.
