 St. Lucia's response to the COVID-19 pandemic will be bolstered in the coming days with a refocused national vaccination drive. Chairman of the COVID-19 Management Centre, Clitta Springer, says the aim is to increase the number of nationals inoculated against the COVID-19 virus. At November 8, 2021, 23.9% of the population had been fully vaccinated. Health officials stressed that vaccination is the best tool to find the pandemic. At a recent meeting of the COVID-19 Management Centre, Chief Medical Officer Dr Sharon Belmar George informed that new research shows that natural immunity developed from contracting COVID-19 has proven not to provide the level of protection needed. Therefore, it is necessary for people who have contracted the virus to be vaccinated. For natural immunity, what the initial data is showing that natural immunity is unpredictable. As everybody is different, your immune response after having and developing COVID is different. For now, most of the research is showing up to three months and at a much lower level as compared to the level of immunity, the antibody production that is seen when a vaccine is used. So on a regional level, reviewing the data that is available at this point. And remember, this is a new vaccine which started earlier in the year. So we don't have information past that level to be able to tell. We don't know exactly how long, if it will be one year or two years, even the vaccines would last. So the initial research shows that the levels of natural immunity is shorter in terms of duration and also in terms of level of antibody production as well. So this is the reason why on a regional level, we have decided not to use natural immunity in the same level as someone who is immunized. The chief medical officer further explained that reinfection in individuals who are unvaccinated continues to be recorded. However, the ministry has not noted reinfection in fully vaccinated individuals. We are getting reinfections in persons who have had COVID and we are not seeing it in fully vaccinated persons. This is being seen on a regional level as well. I think for our reinfection level in country, we've had 40 which is higher than in the region and you can understand why. Our reinfection criteria, our levels I think is only Jamaica and St. Vincent that's below us in our vaccine rates. So given the unpredictability of natural immunity at lower levels, shorter duration, although we acknowledge that there is some immunity but the level of immunity, we cannot recommend that someone not take the vaccine because they have developed COVID. It is recommended that people who have contracted COVID-19 take the vaccine once they have fully recovered to prevent reinfections, severe forms of the disease, hospitalizations and deaths.