Gail Alexan­der

The Health Min­istry is prob­ing phar­ma­cies sell­ing COVID-19 anti­gen rapid tests and will bring the nec­es­sary charges to bear.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh was asked about a phar­ma­cy sell­ing anti­gen rapid tests for $225. The sales were ad­ver­tised on so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

Deyals­ingh said the penal­ty for such sales is a fine of sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars plus six months’ jail.

“We’re tak­ing this very se­ri­ous­ly,” he said.

He added it wasn’t true Gov­ern­ment was run­ning out of test kits.

On whether phar­ma­cists would be al­lowed to vac­ci­nate peo­ple, Deyals­ingh said his min­istry’s le­gal ad­vice was that phar­ma­cists couldn’t do so, but not­ed the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was al­so check­ing it. He said phar­ma­cies were used be­fore for H1N1 vac­cines with a doc­tor and/or nurse ad­min­is­ter­ing that.

But Deyals­ingh said the min­istry’s ad­vice was that al­lied health work­ers, in­clud­ing ear, nose and throat doc­tors, vets and den­tists, could per­form COVID vac­ci­na­tions.

He added that the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies has been asked to or­gan­ise train­ing for 125 such al­lied health work­ers who will as­sist with mass vac­ci­na­tion pro­grammes.

Deyals­ingh al­so con­demned a com­ment and query by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the UNC’s Mon­day fo­rum, when she re­ferred to those who “might be play­ing God” and de­cid­ing how pa­tients might be treat­ed or not. He said she at­tacked pub­lic of­fi­cers’ in­tegri­ty wrong­ful­ly.

“Gov­ern­ment doesn’t guide doc­tors or nurs­es. If she was ask­ing if the is­sue was true, why didn’t she find out be­fore speak­ing? But she took a Face­book post, goes on a plat­form and dis­par­ages doc­tors and nurs­es. They have been our sal­va­tion for the past 14 months do­ing back-break­ing work. Her com­ments bring pub­lic of­fi­cers in­to odi­um!”

Deyals­ingh re­peat­ed that the gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion in oth­er Cari­com states were work­ing to­geth­er on COVID is­sues and said while the UNC was call­ing for uni­ty, its nar­ra­tive said oth­er­wise.

Com­mend­ing the Guardian news­pa­per’s ed­i­to­r­i­al on the COVID is­sue, he agreed, “The Guardian’s clear— we need full co-op­er­a­tion…all of us should do our parts.”

Mean­while, Bermu­da is of­fer­ing to do­nate 8,000 COVID vac­cines to T&T. The in­for­ma­tion was con­firmed re­spec­tive­ly by For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Amery Browne yes­ter­day.

Browne didn’t say when these vac­cines might ar­rive.

He told Guardian Me­dia, “I spoke to­day with the pre­mier of Bermu­da David Burt. He con­firmed the do­na­tion is of­fi­cial.”