The Prime Minister apologised to the elderly and those who had a negative experience while trying to get vaccinated on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, the Ministry of Health began offering first come, first served walk-in vaccination for those over 60 and those younger with non-communicable diseases.

Long lines and crowds ensued at vaccine sites across the country. People began to line up hours before the gates of the vaccine centres opened and many people were turned away because they were ineligible or vaccines were limited.

The collapse of the vaccination programme was amended the following day to only 50 jabs, and again hundreds of people were again turned away.

Speaking at a press conference at the Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s on Saturday, Dr Rowley admitted that walk-in vaccination or mass vaccination was a “bad idea” and took responsibility for it as the head of the government.

He said it was not the fault of the technical staff of the facilities but a communication problem between the government and the wider population.

“Wednesday was a bad day. It was a bad day in that the government, through its agency, through it’s Prime Minister, through it’s infrastructure, tried to do too much with too little. It was a bad idea to try to solve the problem of the registration programme not reaching everyone who wanted to be registered by simply removing that stricture of a registration and replacing it with one can call now, a mass vaccination exercise.”

He “unreservedly apologised,” especially to the elderly who “did in fact come out thinking they could put themselves through probably pain and certainly the inconvenience and disappointment of coming out and not being able to receive the vaccine.”

He promised the ministry would ensure a similar situation would not happen again.

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