The world’s less privileged countries should have the same access to COVID-19 vaccines as the rich ones if travel and tourism around the world is to successfully recover from the pandemic, says Jamaica’s tourism minister.

Warning that “core issues of vaccination equity and hesitancy for the world’s less advantaged countries could derail global tourism recovery,” Edmund Bartlett is urging that the global travel and tourism sector take up the cause to help push the dual initiatives along.

Speaking at the recent virtual Caribbean Travel Marketplace, the tourism minister said, “I am one of the tourism voices out there that have been talking very strongly about vaccine equity and hesitancy – those two factors. Because I do think at the heart of the recovery of tourism globally is the vaccination issue, because it represents the safest and most chemically sound way of preventing the (COVID-19) infection and of reducing the impact that it could have on global travel.”

He continued: “It’s important that… the voice of tourism be heard in the wider community space encouraging and urging not just the manufacturing and the removal of the patent restrictions that exist, but also that countries are more forthright in terms of the distribution process.”

Citing global vaccination statistics, Bartlett stated (as of mid May) that countries such as Israel (59%), the UK (51%) and US (44%) led the way internationally, while his own country, Jamaica registered only 9% of its citizens as having received shots. At the “bottom of barrel,” South Africa only checked in at 1%.

And while vaccinations, including Jamaica, were ramping up, he warned that without help, resource-challenged countries would struggle to keep up, and thereby ultimately hold everyone back.

“So,” Bartlett emphasized, “it is imperative that we speak of and address this issue if the global travel industry is to return to any sense of normalcy.”