Philippines, Myanmar, Indonesia, Venezuela and Latvia reported as hardest countries for crews to secure vaccines
The Philippines, Myanmar, Indonesia, Venezuela and Latvia have been identified by top shipmanagers as the areas with the largest challenge in securing the supply of Covid-19 vaccines.
The five countries were picked out by 10 large global shipmanagers who are providing data for the the Neptune Declaration Crew Change Indicator developed by the Global Maritime Forum.
The latest data from the 10 shipmanagers, who combined have more than 90,000 seafarers working onboard today, shows that only 15.3% of crew are vaccinated. In comparison, the share of the population fully vaccinated against Covid-19 in large shipping nations in Europe, North America and Asia is around 50%.
“Seafarers must be recognised as key workers and given priority access to Covid-19 vaccines. This is key to protect seafarers’ wellbeing and the functioning of global supply chains,” said Kasper Søgaard, head of institutional strategy and development at the Global Maritime Forum.
Fully agree seafarers in general need to treated differently (better) by the general community.
On the other hand, cheap(er) labour is that for a reason and this specific situation – although difficult to predict – is a perfectly natural consequence which is/should have been part of the shipping community’s risk assessment.