The Min­istry of Health is con­firm­ing one new death from COVID-19 in Trinidad and To­ba­go, bring­ing the na­tion­al to­tal to 139 per­sons.

Op­po­si­tion Leader and for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar SC MP, is call­ing for Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rance Deyals­ingh MP, to be fired, over state­ments the min­is­ter had made con­cern­ing the COVID-19 vac­cines do­nat­ed to this coun­try by CARI­COM part­ner, Bar­ba­dos.

The Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al of the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO), Dr Tedros Ad­hanom, has praised Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for his lead­er­ship in man­ag­ing the COVID-19 out­break in T&T.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has is­sued an of­fi­cial state­ment, in re­sponse to the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s call for the health min­is­ter to be fired, fol­low­ing Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh’s apol­o­gy over mis­s­peak­ing on the do­na­tion of COVID-19 vac­cines from Bar­ba­dos.

The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) gave emer­gency use list­ing to two ver­sions of the Ox­ford-As­traZeneca vac­cine on Mon­day, giv­ing the green light for these vac­cines to be rolled out glob­al­ly through the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty.

Chair­man of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies COVID-19 Task Force, Pro­fes­sor Clive Lan­dis, says the ar­rival of the As­traZeneca-Ox­ford COVID-19 vac­cine on Caribbean shores marks a new phase in the re­gion’s fight against the dis­ease.

Speak­ing dur­ing a Min­istry of Health vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence on Mon­day, Di­rec­tor of the Di­rec­torate of Women's Health, Dr Adesh Sir­jus­ingh, said there is cur­rent­ly a lack of da­ta due to the ex­clu­sion of this cat­e­go­ry from the vac­cine clin­i­cal tri­als.  

The lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health is con­firm­ing 4 new pos­i­tive cas­es of COVID-19, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive cas­es in the coun­try to 157 pa­tients.

Par­ents dropped off their chil­dren at schools through­out the coun­try this morn­ing, for the first time in six months.

The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) has con­firmed that CO­V­AX, a coali­tion led by WHO and Gavi to en­sure eq­ui­table ac­cess to COVID-19 vac­cines, has no­ti­fied coun­tries in the Amer­i­c­as of the es­ti­mat­ed dose al­lo­ca­tion for the first phase of vac­cine de­liv­ery, in a let­ter to health au­thor­i­ties.

When the an­nounce­ment came two weeks ago that pop­u­lar cruise line Roy­al Caribbean in­tend­ed to rein­tro­duce T&T as one of the ports of calls on its 2021/2022 sched­ule, re­spons­es were mixed. Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell em­braced the move stat­ing that we would have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case our cul­ture as a unique one, but oth­ers, like Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce Mar­tin George, were scep­ti­cal in this tense sea­son of COVID-19 and its vari­ants.

T&T is set to re­ceive be­tween 100,000 to 120,000 dos­es of the As­traZeneca two-dose vac­cine by the end of Feb­ru­ary in­to March. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50,000 to 60,000 peo­ple will re­ceive the vac­cine in T&T in this first phase.