Un­vac­ci­nat­ed Spe­cial Branch po­lice of­fi­cers have been moved from Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s se­cu­ri­ty de­tails.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith on Sat­ur­day con­firmed that the of­fi­cers at­tached to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent had to be moved be­cause they re­fused to take the COVID-19 vac­cine.

In a brief ex­change with Guardian Me­dia, Grif­fith said the head of the Spe­cial Branch, weigh­ing health con­cerns raised by the Pres­i­dent and Prime Min­is­ter, "act­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly" and di­rect­ed that all of­fi­cers as­signed to both of­fices had to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

"Those who re­fused to be vac­ci­nat­ed were trans­ferred and re­placed by those who agreed to be vac­ci­nat­ed. These of­fi­cers are in di­rect con­tact with these two of­fice­hold­ers dai­ly, in­clu­sive of the of­fi­cial ve­hi­cles, so it was the ob­vi­ous thing to do," Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith did not di­vulge how many of­fi­cers had to be swapped and how many had re­fused to take the vac­cine. The of­fi­cers who refuse to take the vac­cine were "sim­ply trans­ferred to an­oth­er post," he added.

When asked if un­vac­ci­nat­ed of­fi­cers are moved to du­ties that do not in­volve in­ter­ac­tion with the gen­er­al pub­lic, Grif­fith did not re­spond.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.

OPM

The is­sue of un­vac­ci­nat­ed se­cu­ri­ty for the two high­est of­fices in the land came up last week when it was re­port­ed that Pres­i­dent Weekes said that she did not want un­vac­ci­nat­ed staff around her or her 92-year-old moth­er.

Both women were vac­ci­nat­ed on April 6 and June 7 re­spec­tive­ly.

On Thurs­day, the Pres­i­dent's com­mu­ni­ca­tions ad­vis­er Cheryl Lala told Guardian Me­dia, "Those peo­ple who aren't vac­ci­nat­ed and who don't want to be vac­ci­nat­ed...were asked to be ro­tat­ed back to what­ev­er job they used to do be­fore they came to the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent."

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley al­so made it clear at last Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence in To­ba­go that he did had al­so tak­en the de­ci­sion not to have un­vac­ci­nat­ed of­fi­cers in his se­cu­ri­ty de­tail.

“I too had tak­en a de­ci­sion be­cause I am in the group of peo­ple who are par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­posed to the virus so I will do every­thing pos­si­ble to re­duce or min­imise my ex­po­sure to get the virus. I did that but un­for­tu­nate­ly, I was in­fect­ed,” he said.

Row­ley test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 on April 6, 2021, the day he was due to get his first shot of the vac­cine. He got his first dose of the Sinopharm vac­cine on Ju­ly 21, 2021.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so reg­is­tered his dis­ap­point­ment with teach­ers who re­fused to be vac­ci­nat­ed dur­ing her post-Cab­i­net brief­ing. He said many teach­ers re­main un­vac­ci­nat­ed de­spite the Gov­ern­ment’s mass vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme ear­li­er this month that was fo­cused specif­i­cal­ly on those who had to ad­min­is­ter the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) and Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) ex­ams. Some 4,000 vac­cines were al­lo­cat­ed for all teach­ers and ex­am in­vig­i­la­tors in that ex­er­cise.

Last week, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion al­so launched its mass vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve seek­ing to fa­cil­i­tate all teach­ing and non-teach­ing staff. It was an­nounced then that an­oth­er 5,000 vac­cines were set aside for teach­ers.

Last Thurs­day, Row­ley said the slow rate of vac­ci­na­tion among teach­ers was a source of con­cern, as the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing to re­turn the na­tion’s chil­dren to in-per­son class­es when the new school year re­sumes in Sep­tem­ber.

With­in the food in­dus­try, there was al­so some hes­i­ta­tion and a To­ba­go restau­ran­teur lament­ed that a large num­ber of work­ers did not want to be vac­ci­nat­ed. Fast food gi­ant, KFC al­so had to use in­cen­tives to get its staff vac­ci­nat­ed.

The is­sue of vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy be­come a ma­jor top­ic of dis­cus­sion af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter hint­ed two weeks ago that if a more dan­ger­ous vari­ant threat­ened the pop­u­la­tion, the Gov­ern­ment could take steps to make vac­cines manda­to­ry.

T&T is brac­ing for the dread­ed and dead­ly Delta virus, which is al­ready in the Caribbean.

While the virus has not yet been de­tect­ed in T&T, last week the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said it was just a mat­ter of time be­fore it ar­rived.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said on Sat­ur­day that some 15,000 out of a pos­si­ble 20,000 food ser­vice work­ers have been vac­ci­nat­ed.

Deyals­ingh, speak­ing at the COVID-19 health up­date, said the vac­ci­na­tion of dif­fer­ent sec­tors was work­ing.

"They aren't do­ing too bad­ly," he said.

How­ev­er, he said just ten per cent of the pop­u­la­tion had agreed to be vac­ci­nat­ed and more will be done to en­cour­age this group since they live in close quar­ters with oth­ers.

Deyals­ingh al­so con­firmed that the prison pop­u­la­tion was next on the list to be vac­ci­nat­ed, but on­ly a small num­ber agreed to be vac­ci­nat­ed. He said the ad­vent of the Delta vari­ant should spur peo­ple on to get the vac­cine.

"If we vac­ci­nate as many peo­ple as we can in a short space of time, we can get in front of this Delta vari­ant," he said.

He said the vac­cines were op­tion­al "but high­ly rec­om­mend­ed."

"We can speak about the Delta vari­ant as much as we want but at the end of the day, to get in front of it, to make sure it does not dec­i­mate our pop­u­la­tion, to make sure it does not crip­ple our health care sys­tem, just get vac­ci­nat­ed," he said.

Ques­tioned about the Gov­ern­ment bring­ing leg­is­la­tion to make vac­cines manda­to­ry, he re­it­er­at­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter stat­ed that it is not be­ing con­sid­ered at the mo­ment, but that he (PM) ap­pre­ci­at­ed the dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing the idea.

300 peo­ple test pos­i­tive, 6 deaths

An­oth­er six peo­ple have lost their lives to COVID-19 and 300 more peo­ple have test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus.

The COVID-19 death toll now stands at 1,032. In ad­di­tion to these new 300 cas­es, there are now 5,893 ac­tive cas­es in the coun­try.

With re­gards to the on­go­ing vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve, cur­rent­ly 188, 299 peo­ple have been ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed while 326,343 peo­ple have had a sin­gle dose.