IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim has actually invited the World Health Organization’s choice to call seafarers as one of the teams of transport employees that ought to be prioritised for COVID-19 inoculation in circumstances of restricted products. The upgraded support for Stage II of its vaccination roadmap from the that’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) states: “Seafarers and air crews who work on vessels that carry goods and no passengers, with special attention to seafarers who are stranded at sea and prevented from crossing international borders for crew change due to travel restrictions.”

IMO Secretary General Lim stated, “I am glad to see that the WHO recognises the importance of vaccinating seafarers on cargo ships. These individuals are responsible for transporting over 80% of all goods around the world, including food, medicine and vaccine supplies – and have continued to do so despite extremely challenging circumstances. Seafarers will play a key role in the global recovery, and barriers to international travel and crew change must be removed.”

Image Credits: imo.org

The SAGE guidance intends to give support for total program concerns along with vaccine-specific suggestions and also includes 3 actions:

• Step 1: A values framework;
• Step 2: Roadmap for focusing on uses COVID-19 injections;
• Step 3: Vaccine- certain suggestions.

The vaccination prioritization roadmap takes into consideration concern populaces for inoculation based upon epidemiologic setup and also vaccination supply situations and also can be made use of by nations to form their nationwide reaction to the pandemic.

The IMO has actually made a variety of require concern inoculation for seafarers this year, consisting of releasing a joint declaration with various other UN companies in March 2021, requiring seafarers and also aircrew to be focused on for COVID-19 inoculation. In May, IMO embraced a resolution which urged concern inoculation for seafarers in nationwide COVID-19 inoculation programs and also Secretary-General Lim contacted all IMO Member States to mark seafarers as ‘key workers’ and also sustain a reasonable international circulation of COVID-19 injections.

Additional info and also sources associated with the IMO’s job throughout the COVID-19 pandemic can be discovered right here:https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Coronavirus.aspx