Fyz­abad MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has crit­i­cised the Min­istry of Health for a lack of prop­er plan­ning in the roll­out of its na­tion­al vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.

The To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) be­gan vac­ci­na­tions at its newest site on Sat­ur­day.

It is Thurs­day morn­ing–May 27–and I am COVID-19 pos­i­tive, hooked up to an oxy­gen tank and ly­ing on a bed in the tent at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope, des­per­ate­ly hop­ing to live but prepar­ing to die at age 53. I am get­ting worst based on my oxy­gen lev­els, my breath­ing is laboured, I have a high fever, and I am feel­ing ex­treme­ly ex­haust­ed, but Dr Surats­ingh, God bless him, kept me as com­fort­able as he could. I could hear him telling an­oth­er doc­tor how con­cerned he was about my wors­en­ing con­di­tion and that they will need to trans­fer me to the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal. Hear­ing this I be­came very de­pressed and de­ject­ed, I sort of gave up hope and start­ed mak­ing peace with God be­cause I re­al­ly thought by Thurs­day night in­to Fri­day I would have passed away. I was at death's door. It was my third day at the hos­pi­tal. I was brought to the fa­cil­i­ty by an am­bu­lance on Mon­day, May 24 paral­ysed with fear. Thank the Lord I had tak­en the As­traZeneca vac­cine four weeks ear­li­er. But, had I not tak­en my first jab of the vac­cine, I was told, I would have more than like­ly be dead.

Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards says in the past sev­er­al weeks, there has been a slow but steady plateau­ing of COVID-19 cas­es and hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions.

Af­ter a dis­as­trous at­tempt at a first-come, first-serve vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme for el­der­ly peo­ple last week, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has an­nounced a new vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, al­so MP for Lopinot /Bon Air West is promis­ing res­i­dents of the Fiv­er Rivers area that by next year that com­mu­ni­ty will be con­nect­ed to a new waste wa­ter treat­ment plant which is be­ing built in Trinci­ty.

Pres­i­dent of the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion Robin Narayns­ingh is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide vac­cines for its work­ers as he said they too are es­sen­tial work­ers.

As a teenag­er, my first en­counter with a pa­tient was at a com­mu­ni­ty out­reach med­ical clin­ic, whose blood sug­ar was re­mark­ably el­e­vat­ed and the pa­tient be­came hys­ter­i­cal, re­fus­ing the in­sulin shot. This blood sug­ar read­ing was dam­ag­ing­ly high, plac­ing her at risk of slip­ping in­to a co­ma. But her fear of nee­dles was so de­bil­i­tat­ing, it out­weighed all log­ic and re­quired sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts to bring her to calm.

Glob­al­ly, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has been a roller coast­er of un­cer­tain­ty and dis­tress. Lives and liveli­hoods have been trau­ma­tised. The in­for­ma­tion on the dis­ease, on the vac­cines, on the side ef­fects have even been con­flict­ing at times. It was nec­es­sary that I did my own re­search, fil­tered through the mis­in­for­ma­tion, and con­clud­ed it was nec­es­sary to trust the sci­ence. I be­lieve as a busi­ness en­ti­ty, con­sid­er­ing the na­ture of my busi­ness, it was my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be vac­ci­nat­ed. It is my way of pro­tect­ing my staff, my cus­tomers, and the com­mu­ni­ties I in­ter­act with­in.

There’s no gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy at this time to have a pay cut for MPs. How­ev­er, some on the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion sides have been help­ing con­stituents and will con­tin­ue do­ing so.

The leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, has is­sued an ul­ti­ma­tum to the Gov­ern­ment to come up with a plan by next week for cit­i­zens to re­turn to work and pro­vide for their fam­i­lies.

Af­ter weeks of urg­ing cit­i­zens to ad­here to the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions and ob­serve the pa­ra­me­ters set out by the State of Emer­gency (SOE) which took ef­fect on May 15, health of­fi­cials have re­port­ed that it is bear­ing fruit as emerg­ing pat­terns in­di­cate there has been a slow­ing in the num­ber of cas­es be­ing record­ed be­tween mid-May to present.