The lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health is con­firm­ing two new pos­i­tive cas­es of COVID-19, one of whom is a re­cent­ly repa­tri­at­ed per­son.  These new cas­es bring the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive cas­es in the coun­try to 100 pa­tients.

A sec­ondary school in Ma­son Hall, To­ba­go, has been closed fol­low­ing con­fir­ma­tion that a stu­dent at the school has test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

1,000 food ham­pers have been de­liv­ered to fam­i­lies strug­gling dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. On Fri­day the char­i­ta­ble ges­ture was done by the Khair Foun­da­tion sup­port­ed by the Is­lam­ic De­vel­op­ment Bank “COVID-19 Re­lief Project”.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has es­ti­mat­ed that T&T will be pay­ing US$343, 162 for the 100,800 Az­traZeneca vac­cine dos­es that will ar­rive at the end of March.

The math is sim­ple, says Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. T&T's al­lot­ment of the vac­cines from the CO­V­AX Fa­cil­i­ty it spends mil­lions on will on­ly im­mu­nise 20 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion. It is a far cry from the 70 per cent need­ed for herd im­mu­ni­ty, said Mooni­lal yes­ter­day in Debe.
To­geth­er with Bar­rack­pore West coun­cil­lor Nicholas Kan­hai, Mooni­lal do­nat­ed a wheel­chair to Has­pathi Singh, who suf­fered mo­bil­i­ty loss through re­nal fail­ure com­pli­ca­tions. Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter, Mooni­lal said that the first batch ex­pect­ed in T&T in March rep­re­sents on­ly three per cent of what the Gov­ern­ment re­quest­ed. Es­ti­mat­ing that the pop­u­la­tion was 1.4 mil­lion, Mooni­lal said the coun­try needs 1.4 mil­lion dos­es to vac­ci­nate ap­prox­i­mate­ly 700,000 adults who qual­i­fy.
"This Gov­ern­ment has done noth­ing to reach out to the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia, like oth­er coun­tries in the Caribbean, to source vac­cines free of charge. The In­di­an High Com­mis­sion has con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment has not prop­er­ly ap­plied for that. What they have done, we sus­pect, is reach out to com­pa­nies in the world, but not the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia. That is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter," Mooni­lal said.
The CO­V­AX Fa­cil­i­ty aims to ac­cel­er­ate the de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­ture of COVID-19 vac­cines. It seeks to guar­an­tee fair and eq­ui­table ac­cess for every coun­try in the world. De­scrib­ing the sys­tem as strange, Mooni­lal said that the CO­V­AX Fa­cil­i­ty would look at a coun­try's COVID-19 sta­tis­tic and de­ter­mine how many vac­cines it would al­lo­cate.
"If you have a good record, the cas­es of COVID-19 is low, they will tell you, look, you don't de­serve it, an­oth­er coun­try with a high rate de­serves it. So even when you or­der, you won't get what you or­dered if your rate is low. In a lay­man's way, you could be pun­ished for do­ing well be­cause the vac­cines will go to oth­er coun­tries that have a high­er rate of in­fec­tion."
He said that at this time, the CO­V­AX Fa­cil­i­ty would not even pro­vide 20 per cent of what T&T re­quires. He said the Gov­ern­ment was mak­ing no ef­fort to get vac­cines else­where, an im­pend­ing cri­sis to the Gov­ern­ment vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.
Mooni­lal al­so called on Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to ex­plain the pro­to­cols com­pa­nies would fol­low to vac­ci­nate their em­ploy­ees. Say­ing that he took note of this Gov­ern­ment's pol­i­cy to al­low com­pa­nies to car­ry out their own pro­grammes, Mooni­lal ques­tioned whether com­pa­nies would fol­low the same process as the Min­istry of Health. He wants to know whether the com­pa­nies will iden­ti­fy em­ploy­ees who are at a high­er risk of con­tract­ing the virus or have co­mor­bidi­ties and en­sure they get the vac­cines first.
"There is a struc­ture of nine lev­els in which, clear­ly, per­sons over 75 years, who have co­mor­bidi­ties are first in line. Younger peo­ple who are healthy, let us say un­der 50, un­der 40 years, they are prob­a­bly last in line."

The Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) is ramp­ing up its ad­vo­ca­cy for eq­ui­table ac­cess to vac­cines for the re­gion as it called on de­vel­oped na­tions with a his­to­ry of tourism to the is­land chain to make some vac­cines avail­able to the Caribbean na­tions.

Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) has re­ceived new lab­o­ra­to­ry equip­ment which will sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hance its COVID 19 test­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty.

Op­po­si­tion Leader and for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar SC MP, is call­ing on the Row­ley Ad­min­is­tra­tion to tell the truth about their COVID-19 vac­cines ac­qui­si­tion.

Char­la­tans are at­tempt­ing to ped­al over-in­flat­ed—and even down­right fake—vac­cines to the Gov­ern­ment.

Three Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cers have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 and 20 oth­er Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cers have since been di­rect­ed to quar­an­tine at home be­cause of con­tact with the in­fect­ed per­son.

The first set of 100 To­ba­go front­line work­ers re­ceived their ini­tial dos­es of the COVID-19 Ox­ford-As­traZeneca vac­cine at the Scar­bor­ough Health Cen­tre, on Sat­ur­day.

Four hun­dred of the 2,000 vac­cines gift­ed to T&T from Bar­ba­dos have al­ready been ad­min­is­tered be­tween Wednes­day and Fri­day in Trinidad.