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Saturday, March 15, 2025

Govt expects to destroy more expired COVID vaccines this year

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961 days ago
20220727
FILE – This October 2021, photo provided by Pfizer shows kid-size doses of its COVID-19 vaccine in Puurs, Belgium. (Pfizer via AP, File)

FILE – This October 2021, photo provided by Pfizer shows kid-size doses of its COVID-19 vaccine in Puurs, Belgium. (Pfizer via AP, File)

KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

 

Just as the Min­istry of Health had to de­stroy hun­dreds of vials of Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech COVID-19 vac­cines af­ter they ex­pired on June 30, it is like­ly it would do the same for the pae­di­atric ver­sion come Oc­to­ber this year.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from Guardian Me­dia at to­day's Min­istry of Health COVID-19 me­dia con­fer­ence, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said the on­ly COVID-19 vac­cine ap­proved for chil­dren aged 5-11 years in T&T would ex­pire in Oc­to­ber. Ear­li­er this year, Spain do­nat­ed 40,000 dos­es of the vac­cine to T&T.

Deyals­ingh re­port­ed that on­ly 2,687 chil­dren took those vac­cines up to yes­ter­day. He said that giv­en the cur­rent up­take, the Min­istry would have ex­cess stock in Oc­to­ber.

While the Sinopharm and John­son & John­son vac­cines for adults ex­pire in March 2023, Deyals­ingh al­so be­lieves there will be ex­cess.

“Giv­en the cur­rent rate of up­take, yes. There will be some at the cur­rent rate of up­take that will not be used,” Deyals­ingh said.

He did not re­port any sig­nif­i­cant change in COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tions as the coun­try re­mained at 51.1 per cent, the same as last week. There are 715,336 ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple. On­ly 147 peo­ple took shots yes­ter­day, which in­clud­ed boost­ers. So far, 167,163 peo­ple got boost­er shots.

“Our ap­pre­ci­a­tion goes out to them, but as we asked last week, we urge peo­ple who are el­i­gi­ble for boost­ing, es­pe­cial­ly those over 18, to please get boost­ed.”

COVID-19HealthMinistry of HealthGovernmentchildrenCovid vaccines


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