In­mates in the prison sys­tem had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to have their con­cerns about COVID-19 and the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme this week, when two Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters vis­it­ed the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison and made a guest ap­pear­ance on RISE Max­i­mum Ra­dio, a sta­tion which broad­casts ex­clu­sive­ly to the prison pop­u­la­tion.

Gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly an­nounced that the John­son & John­son one-shot COVID-19 vac­cine will be ad­min­is­tered to the prison pop­u­la­tion.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds MP, and Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, along with Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health Dr. Maryam Ab­dool-Richards, ad­dressed ques­tions, queries and con­cerns of in­mates about COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion, on Mon­day 23 Au­gust 2021. Al­so present dur­ing the broad­cast were Shamshudeen Mo­hammed and Car­los Cor­raspe, Deputy Com­mis­sion­ers of Pris­ons, and David Prince, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons.

Dur­ing the hour-long ses­sion, which was broad­cast to all the na­tion's pris­ons, ques­tions were posed to the pan­el by three in­mates who sought in­for­ma­tion on be­half of the prison pop­u­la­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the Prison Ser­vice, the con­cerns ranged from the ef­fec­tive­ness of the vac­cine, the ad­verse ef­fects, avail­abil­i­ty of dif­fer­ent types, re­li­able sources of in­for­ma­tion, what be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed means to the pris­on­ers and the prison it­self, and manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion, to the men­tal health is­sues of pris­on­ers brought on by the re­stric­tions.

The guests, to­geth­er with the as­sis­tance of Dr Hazel Oth­el­lo, Di­rec­tor of Men­tal Health and Nurse Keisha Gomez, In­fec­tions Con­trol Nurse who is as­signed to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice, re­spond­ed to all ques­tions put for­ward, and sought to dis­pel ru­mours sur­round­ing the vac­cine.  They al­so stressed the ben­e­fits of be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed, as the very na­ture of pris­ons al­lows for easy spread of the virus.

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh, who had stat­ed ear­li­er that the John­son and John­son vac­cine would be made avail­able to the pris­on­ers as an op­tion, ex­pressed his de­light at the im­pres­sive and in­tel­li­gent as­sort­ment of ques­tions met­ed out.

Min­is­ter Hinds al­so com­pli­ment­ed the pris­on­ers, stat­ing he hoped that by hav­ing heard from the ex­perts di­rect­ly, that they would be re­spon­si­ble and spread the mes­sage to oth­ers to get vac­ci­nat­ed.