Minister of Health Daniel Cummings has rejected the long‑circulated claim that the country’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr. Simone Keizer-Beache, was responsible for the controversial COVID‑19 vaccine mandate that led to the dismissal of hundreds of public workers in 2021.
Speaking during Tuesday’s parliamentary debate on the Compassionate Gratuity Bill, Cummings said the blame has been wrongly placed on the CMO and insisted that the policy was driven by former prime minister Ralph Gonsalves.
“I am here to say categorically that is not the truth,” Cummings told Parliament.
“I am here to say that COVID madness was the brainchild of the former prime minister who brought it, who insisted on it and who would not hear from any professional voice.”
It is not clear whether Gonsalves, who is now Leader of the Opposition and attended Tuesday’s meeting of the national assembly, was in the chamber hall when Cummings made his statement.
Neither Gonsalves nor senators Carlos James and Keisal Peters — both of whom were Cabinet ministers when the mandate came into effect – challenged Cummings’ assertion.
Gonsalves has repeatedly said publicly that his government acted on Keizer-Beache’s advice.
However, Keizer-Beache, who remains CMO under the New Democratic Party administration, which came to office in November, has never distanced herself from the ULP’s policies, even as hundreds of public sector workers lost their jobs and properties as a result of the mandate.
In fact, Keizer-Beache gave evidence in defence of the mandate in the lawsuit that public sector unions brought challenging the government’s actions.
In 2023, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court ruled the mandate unconstitutional, but the Court of Appeal overturned that decision in a 2-1 decision.
The case is awaiting final determination by the London-based Privy Council.
It is the second time in recent weeks that Cummings, who had criticised the mandate while in opposition, has attempted to reframe the public narrative about how the mandate was conceived and who should be held politically accountable for its consequences.
‘COVID madness’ and 500 dismissals
Cummings’ intervention came after his cabinet colleague Andrew John, MP for South Windward, revisited the human impact of the 2021 mandate, which required vaccination for certain categories of public workers and resulted in the dismissal of more than 500 employees, many of them already on low wages and without.
John described the policy as “wickedness to the highest order” and said affected workers had suffered “so much loss”, including stalled careers and lost years of service.
Cummings adopted similarly strong language, calling the policy “COVID madness” and using it as an example of what he characterised as a vindictive and spiteful style of governance by the former administration:
“When you, for 25 years, operated… with such bile and spitefulness, when anyone who doesn’t agree with you must feel the wrath of your power… That is not how you treat people,” he said.
CMO ‘never in politics’; should not be punished
Cummings also used his speech to draw a contrast with what he said was the previous government’s approach to public servants whose relatives were in opposition politics.
Recalling his own past, he said that after he entered politics, his wife — then president of the Family Court — was removed from her position.
He noted that the late Arthur Williams, a former attorney general under a former Labour government, publicly condemned the move, expressing his opposition in a newspaper commentary.
Cummings then applied that example to Keizer-Beache, whose husband, Glen Beache, was an MP for South Windward from 2005 to 2010 under the ULP administration, which was in office from 2001 to 2025.
“Dr. Simone Keizer has never been in politics. Her husband was,” Cummings said
“Should we, as a government, punish Dr. [Keizer], who has given such quality service to this country, because her husband is in politics other than ours? I say, Mr. Speaker… hell no. Hell no.”
Cummings insisted that professional merit, not political association, must guide the treatment of senior public servants.
“I defend and support every public servant on merit. And this government… led by Dr. Friday, is absolutely supportive of this mission of working with all our people to deliver the service required,” he said.
‘Not about spiting people’
The health minister framed his remarks as part of a broader effort to rebuild trust between public servants and the political directorate after the turmoil of the pandemic and its fallout.
“What I want people to understand: it is not about spiting people. It’s about using our best resources to deliver the best we can do,” Cummings said.
He praised what he described as “serious, hard‑working public servants” in the system and pledged that the current administration would “continue to inspire and to support” them, regardless of their personal political views.
Cummings added that the government faces “a tremendous amount of work” to address conditions in the health sector, including burnt‑out nursing staff, staffing shortages, and poor infrastructure, and argued that repairing relationships with professionals such as the CMO is part of that task.
Rewriting the record on pandemic policy
Cummings’ comments came in a debate formally focused on gratuity for low‑paid, non‑pensionable workers, but they reopened one of the most contentious issues of the pandemic era: who should bear responsibility for the vaccine mandate and mass dismissals.