The long-an­tic­i­pat­ed COVID-19 vac­cines from the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty are now in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The first batch of 33,600 dos­es of the Ox­ford As­traZeneca vac­cine ar­rived yes­ter­day at the South ter­mi­nal of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port prompt­ly at 6.10 pm. 

It was re­ceived by Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dr Er­i­ca Wheel­er along with oth­er min­istry rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

A re­lease from PA­HO de­scribed the de­liv­ery as "a his­toric step to­ward en­sur­ing the eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of COVID-19 vac­cines world­wide." It al­so quot­ed Dr Wheel­er as say­ing: "See­ing this ar­rival is very re­as­sur­ing and it means that more peo­ple will be able to be pro­tect­ed from COVID-19."

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh de­scribed the process as hav­ing gone “smooth­ly” in an in­ter­view with CNC3 news last evening. 

He said the min­istry in­tends to be­gin the roll­out of the Na­tion­al Vac­ci­na­tion Dri­ve next week on Tues­day, April 6 as pre­vi­ous­ly planned.

“We start the na­tion­al roll­out on Tues­day for both is­lands. We start to vac­ci­nate our health­care work­ers, at least we con­tin­ue that be­cause we did 1,000, and then we start to vac­ci­nate per­sons over 60 with co­mor­bidi­ties like di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion in the pub­lic health­care sys­tem. We are al­so go­ing to open it up to mem­bers of the pub­lic health­care sys­tem,” he said in the in­ter­view.

He al­so said the ap­point­ment sys­tem for those in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry out­side of the pub­lic health­care sys­tem would be brought on stream with­in the next few days. 

Over the East­er Week­end, dos­es would be sent to the 21 dis­tri­b­u­tion sites across the coun­try to be­gin in­oc­u­la­tions on Tues­day.

On Thurs­day, 3,000 dos­es would be sent across to To­ba­go.

The sec­ond batch of 67,200 dos­es is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive with­in the next two months. To­geth­er, these two batch­es would con­sti­tute the first tranche of 100,800 vac­cines to the coun­try from the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty. 

T&T signed on to the fa­cil­i­ty on Sep­tem­ber 18, 2020, and made a down­pay­ment of US $1.477 mil­lion. It’s the on­ly chan­nel to pro­cure dos­es for the coun­try that has borne fruit to date. 

On Wednes­day, March 24, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in­di­cat­ed that In­dia would gift this coun­try 40,000 dos­es of the CO­V­ISHIELD (made us­ing Ox­ford-As­traZeneca for­mu­la) vac­cines man­u­fac­tured at the Serum In­sti­tute of In­dia. How­ev­er, there was no date of re­ceipt an­nounced. He al­so in­di­cat­ed Chi­na promised 100,000 dos­es of Sinopharm made by Bei­jing’s Sino­vac Biotech once it at­tains the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s (WHO) emer­gency use list­ing as re­quired for use in T&T’s pop­u­la­tion.

Mean­while, 18 COVID cas­es were re­port­ed yes­ter­day by the Min­istry of Health.

The Dis­tri­b­u­tion Sites

There are four sites iden­ti­fied un­der the ER­HA; the Rio Claro and San­gre Grande Health Cen­tres, the Ma­yaro Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty and the Cumana Out­reach Cen­tre.

Un­der the NCRHA are four sites; the Ari­ma and Cha­gau­nas Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ties, the La Hor­quet­ta and St Joseph En­hanced Health Cen­tres. There are two sites un­der the NWRHA; the Barataria and Diego Mar­tin Health Cen­tres. With eight sites, the SWRHA has the most fa­cil­i­ties ded­i­cat­ed to dis­tri­b­u­tion. These are the Freeport, La Ro­main, Mara­bel­la, Point Fortin and St Made­line Health Cen­tres, along with the Cou­va, Princes Town and Siparia Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ties.

There are three fa­cil­i­ties iden­ti­fied un­der the TRHA; the Canaan/Bon Ac­cord, Rox­bor­ough and Scar­bor­ough Health Cen­tres.

Stor­age

The dos­es re­ceived yes­ter­day would be split in­to two batch­es. Half would be stored at the C40 Cen­tral Stores in Ch­aguara­mas and the oth­er at the new­ly built chiller at the Cou­va Med­ical and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty where they would be es­cort­ed and guard­ed by the De­fence Force.