Former Travel Cayman Director Tasha Ebanks Garcia has defended newly amended COVID-19 protocols easing the travel process for individuals vaccinated at the Health Services Authority, saying it is easier to verify those passengers’ jabs.
Ebanks Garcia made the comment as she responded to critics questioning why the removal of the requirement for 72-hour pre-flight COVID-19 testing, in the latest Control of COVID-19 Regulations, was limited to HSA-vaccinated travellers and not extended to those vaccinated by UK or US health authorities.
“We know what the HSA public health vaccine certificates look like. With reasonable assuredness, we can determine whether or not what’s presented is fraudulent or not in the case of those vaccine cards and so it’s a cautious phased next step component in what will eventually be the opening of our borders,” Ebanks Garcia said when she appeared on the latest episode of the Cayman Compass weekly Facebook talk show The Resh Hour on Wednesday night.
Ebanks Garcia, who is the new Cayman representative to the UK, acknowledged the concern expressed about the protocol, but she said “everything has been done very cautiously and certainly at the forefront of all the decisions has been the safety of the Cayman Islands”.
She explained that the challenge remains in verifying international certificates of vaccinations, in the absence of a global standard.
“We’ve seen articles globally questioning the validity of some of the documentation and whether they’re fraudulent or not and right now there isn’t a mechanism that can be used to assess the vaccine certificates. The challenge also is globally the standards for [these certificates] vary from country to country,” she said.
There is no universally agreed-upon approach for having a vaccination passport or an electronic application for which Cayman authorities can verify that somebody has been vaccinated, she added.
However, in the case of the HSA, local authorities are familiar with documentation distributed here after receiving the vaccine.
She said the changes to the regulations are a step towards easing the travel process and moving the country closer to the goal of reopening borders in a safer manner.
Ebanks Garcia stressed a key component to that goal is hitting the 70% vaccination target.
Current vaccine supplies are set to expire at the end of June. This means individuals must receive their first dose by 9 June in order to get the second dose before expiration.
Ebanks Garcia said she had her reservations about the vaccine, like others did, but she sought extensive medical advice before getting the shot.
She added that her fear of contracting COVID and facing long-term effects from the virus outweighed her apprehension of the vaccine.
“I was at the airport multiple times a week. I was around people who were COVID-positive because we know that some of the travellers that land are COVID-positive. So I was in and amongst that, and one weekend I was feeling really, really unwell and I got so scared that I had COVID… I was more scared in that moment that I had COVID than I was of the idea of getting the vaccine. And I knew for me that was kind of that tipping point and that was the ‘ah ha’ moment,” Ebanks Garcia said.
As of 19 May, 75,284 COVID-19 vaccinations were administered in the Cayman Islands. Of these, 40,778 or 63% of the estimated population have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 53% have completed the two-dose course.
At the beginning of May, following the last scheduled delivery from the UK, there were enough remaining doses to fully vaccinate approximately 7,000 people.
According to Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Lee’s 19 May report, there are sufficient doses remaining to fully vaccinate 3,000 people before these expire at the end of June.
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In her position as Cayman’s UK Representative, Dr Ebanks Garcia should already be aware that the UK NHS app shows clear proof of UK vaccinations with details of name, date of birth, NHS number, names and dates of vaccinations and batch numbers. Unlike an HSA vaccine certificate, it is surely less susceptible to fraud and extremely easy to verify. Indeed, with her UK connections, she should be able to find a method of direct verification with the NHS.
Given the number of doses remaining, it seems impossible to reach the 70% target without ordering more.
Couldn’t agree more David. Far easier to steal a apiece of paper than someone’s identity. This needs another rethink I’d suggest
First of all, David A, unless you have personal knowledge about Ms. Ebanks Garcia, I don’t why you refer to her as DOCTOR Ebanks Garcia. The article doesn’t mention anything about her medical education. She is a FORMER Travel Cayman director. Indeed, her personal story of how it took her so long to get her own vaccination and then finally getting it only when she was personally concerned that she had possibly come down with Covid seems to mirror the reluctance of many Cayman citizens who are still unvaccinated, not feeling any urgency to protect their own health and that of the other citizens. I would say that she does not represent a good example of an official in the government that is supposedly concerned about the plateauing number of citizens getting vaccinated.
And as to the policy of accepting only HSA documented vaccinations, I understand that there are valid concerns about the validity of vaccination certificates from countries other than Grand Cayman. But then again, I don’t see any mention of what is being done to establish a protocol to verify their validity. Considering that there are hundreds of thousands of tourists from North America (US and Canada) that contribute to Cayman’s economy, it would seem that it should be a priority of the Cayman Health Service to get working on a system to validate these vaccinations ASAP. Instead all we seem to hear are the usual excuses of: “We are concerned” and “everything is being done cautiously.” Before we know it, it will be fall and there will STILL not be any plans to reopen the border to tourism.
To Plucca22 L: I gave Ebanks Garcia the title “Dr.” because she has a doctorate in psychology and the Cayman Government and the Cayman Compass refer to her as such.
To add to my comments that UK NHS vaccination certificates should be accepted to avoid the 72-hour testing requirement, one can download a certificate directly from the NHS giving precise details of all vaccinations. This, plus digital proof, should be more than enough to satisfy the ultra-cautious Cayman officials who seemed determined to put off the opening of the border as long as possible.