Dr. Shetty urges people in Cayman to get vaccinated

In a message from Bangalore, the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak in India, Health City founder Dr. Devi Shetty has urged people in Cayman to get vaccinated, saying he had not seen a single COVID patient in his Indian hospital’s critical care unit who had received both doses of the vaccine.

Speaking from Narayana Health City in Bangalore, Shetty said he and his colleagues had seen thousands of COVID patients, but none of whom had been fully vaccinated. “Believe me, vaccinations work,” he said.

In a written and video message, Shetty said, “COVID is not going away, it’s not going to go away for a year or two, or maybe forever. However, we are not helpless. We now know the best way to protect ourselves against COVID-19 is vaccination.”

At the time of recording the message, he said, his hospital was treating 700 COVID patients.

He spoke of the pressure hospitals in India are facing as they deal with thousands of new cases a day, and warned of what Cayman may experience if local vaccination rates do not reach a sufficient level to provide widespread coverage and protection by the time the borders reopen.

“You cannot keep yourself locked down forever. One day when you open your borders, believe me, the virus will find you. And when this happens, there will not be enough ICU beds, oxygen or life-saving medicine, because it will not be a few people that contract COVID, it will be hundreds of people landing at the hospital at the same time. I have seen it all here in India and I do not want to see it again. I do not want to see it happen in the Cayman Islands,” Shetty said.

“Please don’t delay, please get yourself vaccinated against COVID-19 to protect yourself and your loved ones.”

While numbers of COVID cases in Cayman have been low, and there has not been a single community transmission case since last year, other countries, including India, have been struggling to contain the disease.

Shetty pointed out that since the beginning of the pandemic, at least one in 50 residents of India have been infected by COVID-19 – a total of 27.4 million reported cases – and more than 315,000 people have died from the coronavirus.

Only 3% of the population of India has been fully vaccinated, compared to Cayman’s 56%, as of 26 May.

Shetty said that, in his experience, the first wave of COVID primarily affected old, frail people, but in the second wave, involving new variants, young people were succumbing to the disease.

“The new variants do not discriminate. Today, it is the young, fit, athletic people who are dying of COVID,” he said.

As of 26 May, 42,790 people in Cayman (66% of the estimated population of 65,000) have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 56% have completed the two-dose course. Cayman’s supply of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will expire at the end of June, and anyone who has not yet had a first dose would need to receive that shot by 9 June, to enable them to get the second dose after 21 days, before the expiration date.