Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young who has been vac­ci­nat­ed prefers to wait for the re­sults of the au­top­sy be­fore he com­ments on the cause of death of Franklin Khan who held the port­fo­lio of the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy at the time of his death yes­ter­day.

Khan, who had been ail­ing for some time and had a pro­ce­dure done in 2017 for heart-re­lat­ed is­sues, died yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Khan re­ceived the COVID-19 vac­cine last Tues­day.

“First of all, let me make it abun­dant­ly clear that I am not a med­ical doc­tor, I am not a med­ical ex­pert by any means. What I can say is that the Min­istry of Health per­son­nel, the Dis­trict Med­ical of­fi­cer, through the au­top­sy…let us wait on the re­sult of that. Let us un­der­stand that Min­is­ter’s Khan’s fam­i­ly is al­so go­ing through their griev­ing process. Let us give them space. I trust the med­ical sys­tem of T&T. I trust the sci­ence. So I will await the out­come of those re­sults,” Young said yes­ter­day speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at Camp Og­den, Long Cir­cu­lar Road.

Young re­ceived his COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion at Camp Og­den yes­ter­day.

Oth­er heads of di­vi­sions in the Min­istry of Se­cu­ri­ty who were vac­ci­nat­ed in­clude Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, Ag Chief of De­fence Staff, Brigadier Gen­er­al Dex­ter Fran­cis, Ag Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, Den­nis Pul­chan, Chief Fire Of­fi­cer, Mar­lon Smith, CEO, Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment, Ma­jor Gen­er­al, Rod­ney Smart, Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer, Char­maine Gand­hi-An­drews and Com­man­dant, T&T Cadet Force, Lieu­tenant Colonel Reynold Yorke.

Ac­cord­ing to news re­ports, eight days af­ter tak­ing the As­traZeneca vac­cine 60-year-old Ijaz Han­iff who suf­fered from blood clot­ting and paral­y­sis died.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram has said that in­ter­na­tion­al stud­ies show that there seems to be a causative link be­tween the vac­cine and clot­ting, but this was a rare oc­cur­rence, four in one mil­lion.

Young said that the fact that he has been vac­ci­nat­ed sends a mes­sage that it is re­li­able.

“I don't think I can give any more as­sur­ance that I have just done and demon­strat­ed. I have an un­der­ly­ing con­di­tion as well. I am a hy­per per­son with blood pres­sure and here I am. I’ve come and tak­en my dose as all the oth­er heads in the Min­istry of Se­cu­ri­ty. There can be no bet­ter en­dorse­ment than what we have just done.

He al­so spoke about the quo­ta of vac­cines the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has re­ceived.

“We have got­ten more vac­cines in the coun­try. The Min­istry of Health has giv­en us at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty a cer­tain quo­ta of vac­cines of 3,000 vac­cines in the first in­stance. What we will do is dis­trib­ute that to our var­i­ous agen­cies for the front­line work­ers. So not every­one will get it in the first round.”

He spoke about the new COVID-19-re­lat­ed re­stric­tions that were im­ple­ment­ed last week and said that law en­force­ment agen­cies are do­ing all that is “rea­son­able” to en­sure that the pop­u­la­tion abides by the reg­u­la­tions.

“Just last night I was telling the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice that we were get­ting re­ports of cer­tain be­hav­iour that were go­ing against the law. The Com­mis­sion­er him­self went out there and made sure that the reg­u­la­tions were be­ing kept.”

Speak­ing about the repa­tri­a­tion process, he said thou­sands have been brought back home to T&T.

“We con­tin­ue to repa­tri­ate hun­dreds of peo­ple every month. Thou­sands have been repa­tri­at­ed. The next surge is stu­dents. Those are stu­dents who have gone away and their uni­ver­si­ties are clos­ing next few weeks. I am see­ing that start­ing to fill the repa­tri­a­tion con­ver­sa­tion. We will con­tin­ue to turn it around as quick­ly as we can.”

He al­so said that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley who test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 was “do­ing well.”

“I can tell you through­out this whole pe­ri­od since the Prime Min­is­ter told us that he test­ed pos­i­tive he has been as nor­mal. He is con­stant­ly in con­tact with his min­is­ters. We con­tin­ue to pray for his quick turn­around.”

Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion of­fi­cials take the jab

Sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion of­fi­cials have tak­en the As­traZeneca COVID vac­cine at var­i­ous lo­ca­tions. The vac­cines were be­ing of­fered to Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans yes­ter­day.

But some MPs have tak­en the vac­cines be­fore that.

Among those ac­cept­ing the vac­cine in Diego Mar­tin yes­ter­day, of­fi­cials said, were Sen­ate vice pres­i­dent Nigel De Fre­itas, Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Symon de No­bri­ga, Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Has­sel Bac­chus, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian.

UNC MPs who took the vac­cines in re­cent days so far in­clud­ed Rudy In­dars­ingh, Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, Dr Rai Rag­bir, Rush­ton Paray, Dr Rishad Seecher­an. Rod­ney Charles said he took it on Tues­day. But some, in­clud­ing cer­tain UNC front­lin­ers, haven’t tak­en it yet pre­fer­ring to al­low front­line work­ers to get the vac­cine sup­plies.

Yes­ter­day Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials com­ment­ed on the po­si­tion of var­i­ous coun­tries which have sus­pend­ed or halt­ed the use of the As­traZeneca vac­cine due to blood clots oc­cur­ring in most­ly fe­males and some deaths. Aus­tralia was the lat­est. Some of these coun­tries didn't rec­om­mend this vac­cine for peo­ple un­der 60.

But T&T of­fi­cials said it was crit­i­cal for Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to have pro­tec­tion since they as well as Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lors are “on the ground” work­ing amid the threat of COVID. They said the Prime Min­is­ter had al­so en­cour­aged tak­ing the vac­cine.

(Gail Alexan­der)