SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

As vac­cine up­take in To­ba­go re­mains low, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is plan­ning to roll out a new vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.

In a video post­ed to the Face­book ac­count of the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion, new­ly in­stat­ed Sec­re­tary, Dr Faith B Yis­rael, ap­pealed to To­bag­o­ni­ans to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est COVID-19 clin­i­cal up­date, there were 20 new cas­es re­port­ed on the is­land, with a to­tal of 1,308 ac­tive cas­es.

There are cur­rent­ly ten peo­ple in the In­ten­sive Care Unit, with one new death. So far, the is­land has record­ed 167 deaths in to­tal.

But the is­land’s vac­ci­na­tion rate re­mains low- with 22,772 peo­ple ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed while 2113 peo­ple have re­ceived their boost­er shots.

Yes­ter­day, Yis­rael urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

“The fact re­mains that the vac­cines that we have in Trinidad and in To­ba­go are safe and they work. We would be rolling out a brand new vac­ci­na­tion process that would in­clude speak­ing close­ly with you, in­di­vid­u­als who have not been vac­ci­nat­ed,” Yis­rael said.

She said she hopes those con­ver­sa­tions will ease the minds of those who are hes­i­tant and en­cour­age them to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

“I want to un­der­stand why you are hes­i­tant, I want to un­der­stand what your con­cerns are and when we have that con­ver­sa­tion, I would be bring­ing the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion to you,” she said.

Yis­rael did not say when this new pro­gramme would roll out but she re­mind­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans that vac­cines are a part of the larg­er group of pro­to­cols they need to ad­here to to with­stand the pan­dem­ic.