President Wavel Ramkalawan speaks about the Covid-19 situation to CNN’s Julia Chatterley in ‘First Move’ ‘The Covid-19 vaccines have saved Seychelles’ By Marie-Anne Lepathy |26 May 2021

President Ramkalawan during the interview yesterday via Skype

President Wavel Ramkalawan has said the Covid-19 vaccines have saved Seychelles as those who have been vaccinated do not show any symptoms after contracting the virus and up to now we haven’t had a single death among people who’ve had the two vaccine doses.

The President has also stressed that Seychelles is totally safe and that up to now we have not had even one case of a tourist having to be hospitalised and should they come with the virus or contract the virus, we have the facilities and our health system is not overwhelmed like in many countries and this is because we are taking the necessary precaution.

President Ramkalawan made these remarks yesterday in an interview via Skype with CNN’s correspondent Julia Chatterley in the programme ‘First Move’.

The interview came after reports that Seychelles was seeing a spike in Covid-19 cases despite a 70% vaccination rate.

“In terms of fully vaccinated as far as the two doses are concerned Seychelles is at 64% but as far as the first dose is concerned we are at 100% because we have vaccinated 70% of our population so this is where we stand right now,” President Ramkalawan said.

Talking about reopening the country for tourism in late March, President Ramkalawan dispelled the CNN journalist’s concern of probably seeing more Covid-19 cases by reassuring the world through her that “the reopening has been a real success; the economy has taken off once again, we’ve had many visitors though not from Europe which is our main market but from secondary markets like Russia, Israel and the UAE. But I must say that things were going extremely well until around May 8 when we saw a spike in the number of cases and this got many people, even the World Health Organisation, to ask questions but I must say that the numbers have now gone down and yesterday for example we registered only 58 new cases. But we also realised that the majority of people who were contracting the virus had not been vaccinated and those who had been vaccinated were asymptomatic meaning people were tested positive but they did not have any symptoms,” the President said..

“Something else that really struck us and proved to us that the two vaccines have really been effective is that up to now we haven’t had a single death among people who’ve had the two vaccine doses and furthermore we have an old people’s home where 86 patients who had received only one dose of the Astra Zeneca vaccine were totally asymptomatic and have all recovered so the vaccines have really saved the Seychelles,” he pointed out.

As some people have questioned the efficacy of the Chinese vaccine and based on what he has said on the vaccines, President Ramkalawan was asked if there was any reason to assume that the efficacy rate of the Chinese vaccine is significantly lower than other vaccines out there.

To that question President Ramkalawan replied in the negative and affirmed that he himself took the Sinopharm vaccine and he was the first person in Seychelles as well as the first African leader to receive the vaccine.

He pointed out that all the talk about the vaccine are only politics, noting that the efficacy of the Sinopharm vaccine is ‘perfect’ and has saved the Seychelles.

“If the Sinopharm vaccine was not effective we would have had deaths, more people being hospitalised and suffering which has not been the case.”

And using himself as an example, he stressed that “all vaccines are working” and that he has no reason to doubt the efficacy of the Sinopharm and the Astra Zeneca vaccines.

Asked if Seychelles paid for the vaccines and whether there were no special privileges given to China for Seychelles to get access to these vaccines, President Ramkalawan took the opportunity to clarify the situation, stressing that Seychelles has not bought one single vaccine dose but received the gifts of the vaccine doses from the UAE, India and Russia and this is thanks to the good friendship Seychelles has with these countries.

The President also talked about the country’s economic recovery and safety measures following its reopening to visitors in March.

“I can look at everyone in the eye and say come to Seychelles. Seychelles is totally safe, up to now we have not had even one case of a tourist having to be hospitalised and should they come with the virus or contract the virus, we have the facilities and our health system is not overwhelmed like in many countries and this is because we are taking the necessary precaution. We ask tourists to wear masks and keep social distance and at the hotels there are in place standard operating procedures. So it is safe and this is why tourists are coming to Seychelles and they’ve been coming in droves and this has helped the country to recover. The major hotels have a 90% occupancy rate, visitors can do their exit PCR tests so Seychelles is absolutely safe with hotels and taxis all certified by the health authorities and anyone can come and enjoy their holiday and return home safely.