Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

A sec­ond Pfiz­er COVID-19 boost­er dose will be of­fered to se­lect­ed groups from to­mor­row. 

The news came from Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh at Thurs­day’s vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence.

He said the de­ci­sion was made in light of new guide­lines from the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO).  

“The WHO SAGE group (Strate­gic Ad­vi­so­ry Group of Ex­perts on Im­mu­ni­sa­tion), al­so our lo­cal TAG (Tech­ni­cal Ad­vi­so­ry Group), I’m ad­vised by the CMO, has now signed on and signed off to a sec­ond boost­er or a fourth shot of mR­NA vac­cine,” he said. 

He said these jabs will on­ly be ad­min­is­tered to those over 60, health­care work­ers and the im­muno­com­pro­mised. 

“So per­sons who are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, who have been boost­ed, can now get a fourth shot but the fourth shot will on­ly be the Pfiz­er mR­NA,” he said.

With an in­ter­val re­quire­ment of be­tween the boost­ers of four to six months, on­ly those who re­ceived their first boost­er dose on or be­fore Jan­u­ary 20, 2022, will be el­i­gi­ble come Fri­day. He said those who con­tract­ed COVID-19 since they re­ceived their first boost­er dose will have the wait the cus­tom­ary three months be­fore get­ting the sec­ond boost­er.

How­ev­er, with the cur­rent batch of 51,722 Pfiz­er dos­es set to ex­pire at the end of June and no cur­rent plans to se­cure more, it means any­one who got their first boost­er or con­tract­ed COVID-19 af­ter March 30, 2022, will not be able to ac­cess this sec­ond boost­er de­spite meet­ing the oth­er re­quire­ments. 

In an in­ter­im state­ment pub­lished on May 17, 2022, the WHO SAGE ac­knowl­edged lim­it­ed da­ta on the ef­fi­ca­cy of ad­di­tion­al mR­NA boost­ers suc­ces­sive to the ini­tial boost­er. De­spite this, SAGE not­ed the avail­able da­ta “sug­gest that, for high­est risk groups, there is a ben­e­fit that sup­ports the ad­min­is­tra­tion of an ad­di­tion­al boost­er dose.”

Pre­vi­ous guid­ance from WHO SAGE up to Jan­u­ary 2022, on­ly sup­port­ed the fourth dose for the im­muno­com­pro­mised.

Al­though there is an in­ter­im state­ment on the ad­di­tion­al boost­er, it is yet to be in­clud­ed in its tech­ni­cal guide­lines for the ap­proved mR­NA vac­cines.

Mean­while, Deyals­ingh said the 40,000 pae­di­atric Pfiz­er COVID-19 vac­cine dos­es for chil­dren 5 to 11 years have left Spain. How­ev­er, he was un­able to give a firm ar­rival date due to the nu­mer­ous stops it will need to make be­fore get­ting to T&T. 

“The route is a rather com­plex one be­cause it’s com­ing from Spain. It goes from Spain, I be­lieve, (to) Barcelona over land, to Brus­sels. It is flown from Brus­sels to Mi­a­mi and then flown from Mi­a­mi to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“We don’t have firm de­tails as to flight arrange­ments from Mi­a­mi to Trinidad as yet.”

He said the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the dos­es will be­gin two work­ing days af­ter the vac­cines ar­rive in the coun­try. 

The min­is­ter al­so con­firmed that be­tween May 9 and 15, there were 328 pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es com­ing out of 153 schools.

This makes 950 cas­es to come out of the school sys­tem since the third aca­d­e­m­ic term be­gan on April 19 with a re­turn to phys­i­cal class­es. The first week of the re­turn saw 28 cas­es from 16 schools. The sec­ond week fea­tured 288 cas­es from 243 schools, fol­lowed by 306 cas­es from 144 schools the next week.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh, there were 328 cas­es from 153 schools last week. 

The Min­istry of Health’s Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion’s Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor, Dr Av­ery Hinds, said con­tact trac­ing da­ta has not point­ed to spread with­in the school set­ting. How­ev­er, he did not rule it out as a pos­si­bil­i­ty. 

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