One med­ical ex­pert has sound­ed a warn­ing that the coun­try's low COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion rate could lead to the emer­gence of a new vari­ant of the virus.

In re­sponse to grow­ing ev­i­dence of pos­si­ble vac­cine card fraud, the Min­istry of Health has em­barked on a com­pre­hen­sive card ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise through­out the coun­try.

That’s the as­sess­ment of Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vice In­dus­tries (TTC­SI), Vashti Guyadeen.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic are now free to en­joy the ser­vices of their favourite spas, hair­dressers, bar­bers, hair and beau­ty tech­ni­cians, and to ac­cess do­mes­tic ser­vices and re­al es­tate ser­vices once more, fol­low­ing the re­open­ing of these busi­ness­es to­day.

The Unit­ed States Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion has giv­en its stamp of ap­proval to the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech COVID-19 vac­cine, for per­sons 16 years of age and old­er.  It al­so will con­tin­ue to be avail­able un­der emer­gency use au­tho­riza­tion (EUA) for per­sons 12 to 15 years of age, as well as for use as a third dose in some im­muno-com­pro­mised per­sons.

Four more peo­ple have lost their lives to COVID-19, while an­oth­er 123 peo­ple have test­ed pos­i­tive for the dis­ease, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Tu­na­puna, Es­mond Forde MP, launched the jin­gle for his “Sleeves Up” vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign on Sat­ur­day, at the Mass Vac­ci­na­tion site run by the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) in Ch­agua­nas.

Young peo­ple 12- to 18-years-old will con­tin­ue to ac­cess the Pfiz­er Vac­cine at the Mass Vac­ci­na­tion Site lo­cat­ed at Cen­tre Pointe Mall, Ram­saran Street, Ch­agua­nas, as the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad & To­ba­go (SATT) con­tin­ues its COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve.

Sev­en more peo­ple have lost their lives to COVID-19, while an­oth­er 257 peo­ple have test­ed pos­i­tive for the dis­ease, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health.

Hun­dreds of young peo­ple showed up at the mass vac­ci­na­tion site run by the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) at the Cen­tre Pointe Mall, Ch­agua­nas, on Fri­day, one of two new sites opened by the Min­istry of Health to roll out the Pfiz­er Vac­cine to young peo­ple be­tween the ages of 12-18 years.

Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs, Sen­a­tor Amery Browne, has con­firmed the ar­rival and re­ceipt of the ship­ment of 108,000 WHO-ap­proved John­son & John­son COVID-19 vac­cines, via the African Med­ical Sup­plies Plat­form (AM­SP).