Taumeasina Island Resort staff have taken a lead in the tourism sector by making sure that their staff were among the first vaccinated during this week’s vaccination programme.

The resort’s manager, Tuiataga Nathan Bucknall, was at the Moataa Congregational Christian Church of Samoa (C.C.C.S) Hall on Monday morning. He had brought a few of his staff to the vaccination site.

In an interview with the Samoa Observer on Monday morning, Tuiataga revealed he is bringing the resort staff in groups to get vaccinated.

“It's important that we support the vaccination programme and we’re bringing our staff down for a week, it's nice and close to us,” he said.

“We’re just bringing them down as they become available and as long as they don’t have any medical issues or anything then they come down and get their vaccination.”

Tuiataga received his vaccination on Wednesday last week at the Samoa Tourism Authority (S.T.A) Fale and is encouraging others to get vaccinated, and added that his staff is amazing for getting their vaccines.

“I think we’ve all realised the importance of getting the vaccines,” Tuiataga said.

He said that he and others globally are hoping for a resolution to the global pandemic that had brought the tourism industry to its knees. 

“I got mine last week and the reason why I got mine last week was in hope that people would see that it’s safe to do and I did some posting of my own pictures last week and hopefully you know with the other people that are getting their vaccinations done, people will realise that it's safe and the right thing to do,” he said.

The 24,000 Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses had arrived on 9 April via plane from New Zealand. 

The mass vaccination programme is currently underway and started with constituents in villages at the Vaimauga 1 and Vaimauga 2 electorates which started on Monday and will end on Friday.