In an­tic­i­pa­tion of re­ceiv­ing its first batch of COVID-19 vac­cines in the first quar­ter of 2021, lo­cal health au­thor­i­ties are busy prepar­ing fa­cil­i­ties for its stor­age and dis­tri­b­u­tion.

And while Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has not able to say ex­act­ly which vac­cine T&T will be re­ceiv­ing or the costs, he as­sured stor­age lo­ca­tions are be­ing read­ied ahead of time.

Speak­ing dur­ing the Min­istry of Health’s me­dia brief­ing on Sat­ur­day, he said three sub-ze­ro freez­ers had al­ready been iden­ti­fied with­in the coun­try which could be used to store the Pfiz­er vac­cine which has to be kept at -72 de­grees cel­sius.

The ex­ist­ing lo­ca­tions are the Trinidad Pub­lic Health Lab; the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal; and the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope.

He said they are cur­rent­ly be­ing re-com­mis­sioned and ser­viced as part of the na­tion­al prepa­ra­tion plan.

Mean­while, the min­is­ter added, “In case we re­ceive a vac­cine that has to be stored at -20, we al­ready have in-coun­ty in the pub­lic health sec­tor two sub-ze­ro -20 freez­ers at the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal.”

Con­firm­ing of­fi­cials had vis­it­ed To­ba­go last Thurs­day to in­spect their vac­cine stor­age fa­cil­i­ty, Deyals­ingh dis­closed, “The chiller there is in good con­di­tion. There will have to be some mi­nor tweaks, but if To­ba­go had to re­ceive vac­cines, they can re­ceive vac­cines.”

Stat­ing that the C40 stor­age fa­cil­i­ty in Ch­aguara­mas has space, he said ten­ders had al­ready gone out through the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NR­CHA), which is the pro­cure­ment agency, for in­ter­est­ed peo­ple to build the chiller at the Cou­va fa­cil­i­ty.

Hop­ing to be in a state of readi­ness by the end of Feb­ru­ary with the chiller at Cou­va, Deyals­ingh said, “We are an­tic­i­pat­ing that if we are to start re­ceiv­ing vac­cines from March, we will be in a po­si­tion to do so; to re­ceive, to store, and to dis­trib­ute.”

He said ad­di­tion­al or­ders for sub-ze­ro freez­ers had al­ready been placed.

Re­cap­ping the MOH’s re­sponse which be­gan on Ju­ly 13 when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley com­mu­ni­cat­ed T&T’s in­ter­est in ac­quir­ing COVID-19 vac­cines through the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) re­volv­ing fund, Deyals­ingh went on to de­tail the var­i­ous steps that had been tak­en be­tween Sep­tem­ber 9 and No­vem­ber 19.

Re­veal­ing that they had been hand­ed an 18-pa­ra­me­ter pre-req­ui­site by PA­HO on De­cem­ber 2 to be ful­filled, he said that re­port was sub­mit­ted on De­cem­ber 15.

In­di­cat­ing he had vis­it­ed satel­lite cen­tres which will be used as dis­tri­b­u­tion points for the vac­cine un­der the aus­pices of the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty—span­ning ar­eas from To­co to San­gre Grande and Ma­yaro to Rio Claro last week —Deyals­ingh said, “We are choos­ing sites that have re­sus­ci­ta­tion ca­pac­i­ty in case, in the un­like­ly event that some­one should have an ad­verse re­ac­tion, these sites must have re­sus­ci­ta­tion equip­ment.”

In­di­cat­ing sim­i­lar mea­sures would be un­der­tak­en through the oth­er RHAs and should be com­plet­ed by the end of the first week in Jan­u­ary, Deyals­ingh said, “I am sat­is­fied we are on the right path.”

Deyals­ingh point­ed out that CO­V­AX, the glob­al ini­tia­tive to en­sure rapid and eq­ui­table ac­cess to COVID-19 vac­cines for all coun­tries re­gard­less of their in­come lev­el, an­nounced it had arrange­ments in place to ac­cess near­ly two bil­lion dos­es of COVID-19 vac­cines dur­ing 2021, on be­half of 190 par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries.