Derek Achong

The coun­try’s first pub­lic/pri­vate mass vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve has ex­ceed­ed ex­pec­ta­tions with 2,697 em­ploy­ees in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed yes­ter­day.
While Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh es­ti­mat­ed that 2,500 cit­i­zens a day could be ser­viced at the Di­vali Na­gar in Ch­agua­nas, 197 more were able to ben­e­fit from yes­ter­day’s event which was a part­ner­ship be­tween the Min­istry of Health, the Min­istry Trade and In­dus­try, and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA).
Sources said that im­pres­sive num­bers achieved set a lo­cal record for the most num­ber of vac­cines ad­min­is­tered at a sin­gle lo­ca­tion over a day.
Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics pre­sent­ed by the Min­istry of Health in its dai­ly COVID-19 up­date, late yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, a to­tal of 118,577 had re­ceived their first dose on Sun­day as com­pared to 114,161 on Sat­ur­day. 
The TTMA’s mem­bers that were vac­ci­nat­ed dur­ing the dri­ve ac­count­ed for al­most two thirds of all cit­i­zens across T&T who got their first dose yes­ter­day.

Ad­dress­ing the me­dia at the start of the dri­ve, Deyals­ingh said the ini­tia­tive would great­ly as­sist the Gov­ern­ment in achiev­ing its vac­ci­na­tion goals and in turn al­low it to re­open more sec­tors in the coun­try soon­er.
“We want to get back and open the econ­o­my as soon as hu­man­ly pos­si­ble...This will ex­po­nen­tial­ly in­crease the num­ber of vac­ci­nat­ed per­sons in T&T,” Deyals­ingh said. 
He said af­ter the TTMA’s mem­bers use the 5,000 vac­cines al­lot­ted for their first dose, the site would be used to serve oth­er sec­tors such as food and bev­er­age, which have al­so part­nered with the min­istry and been giv­en pri­or­i­ty ac­cess to vac­cines. 
Deyals­ingh al­so not­ed that the mass vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve will al­so fo­cus on the con­struc­tion and pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty sec­tors and would work in tan­dem with the cur­rent ap­point­ments sys­tem used by re­gion­al health care cen­tres. 
He al­so not­ed that on Wednes­day, the min­istry would launch its first come first serve sys­tem at re­gion­al health cen­tres for per­sons over 60 with­out non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases and per­sons un­der 60 with non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases such as asth­ma and obe­si­ty. 
He sug­gest­ed that pro­vid­ed that the Gov­ern­ment re­ceives a steady sup­ply of com­mer­cial­ly ob­tained vac­cines, as ex­pect­ed, it hopes to ex­tend the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme and ful­ly cov­er an ad­di­tion­al 380,000 cit­i­zens by Oc­to­ber. 
Deyals­ingh al­so praised the TTMA for or­gan­is­ing the ini­tia­tive at short no­tice as he claimed that it had come up with use­ful ideas for mak­ing the vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve more ef­fi­cient while main­tain­ing safe­ty. 
“I must say that they did not on­ly take the tem­plate but they ac­tu­al­ly im­proved on it. They learned from us and we are now go­ing to learn from them,” Deyals­ingh said. 
He al­so re­vealed that the min­istry was ex­pect­ing a fresh batch of vac­cines this week, but de­clined to give de­tails over the man­u­fac­tur­er and the quan­ti­ty un­til clos­er to that time. 
TTMA pres­i­dent Tri­cia Coos­al said that she was pleased with her mem­bers’ re­sponse to the vac­ci­nate dri­ve and even not­ed that it was over­sub­scribed with mem­bers putting for­ward more par­tic­i­pants that could have been ac­com­mo­dat­ed with the spe­cif­ic al­lo­ca­tion of vac­cines. 
“This au­gurs well for man­u­fac­tur­ers as we be­lieve that we are the lifeblood of the econ­o­my and we can con­tin­ue to sus­tain liveli­hoods while be­ing safe and pre­serv­ing lives,” Coos­al said. 
Coos­al not­ed that there had been some vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy but said that her or­gan­i­sa­tion was ad­dress­ing it by com­bat­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion with pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes. 
Yes­ter­day’s vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve, which utilised the As­traZeneca vac­cine, was sup­port­ed by vol­un­teers from the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion and Se­wa In­ter­na­tion­al TT. 
The as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent Dr Vishi Be­har­ry claimed that med­ical pro­fes­sion­als in­clud­ing doc­tors, in­terns, nurs­es and even vet­eri­nar­i­ans had vol­un­teered to give up their week­end to as­sist in vac­ci­nat­ing cit­i­zens.
“They all came out and un­der­stand that we have to vac­ci­nate our pop­u­la­tion. We are here to sup­port as al­ways,” Be­har­ry said. 
Al­so speak­ing at the event was Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon who said she hoped that it would be ex­tend­ed to more non-es­sen­tial man­u­fac­tur­ers so that the Gov­ern­ment could pos­si­bly achieve its goal of a 50 per cent in­crease in man­u­fac­tur­ing by 2025. 
“The on­ly way we can do that is to get every­one vac­ci­nat­ed,” Gopee-Scoon said. 
In a brief in­ter­view af­ter re­ceiv­ing his vac­cine, Ray­on George, an em­ploy­ee of Carib Glass, said he was pleased with the ini­tia­tive as he had at­tempt­ed to se­cure an ap­point­ment but was un­suc­cess­ful.
“I en­cour­age peo­ple to come out to get this vac­cine be­cause we could be able to open places faster and the coun­try could go back to some nor­mal­cy,” George said.
Speak­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s on Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed that through an arrange­ment with the African Med­ical Coun­cil (AMC) the coun­try is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive 800,000 dos­es of the John­son & John­son one-dose vac­cines by Au­gust.

A sec­ond ship­ment of Sinopharm vac­cines to sup­ple­ment the 100,000 dos­es do­nat­ed by the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment is al­so ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in T&T, lat­er this week. 
“We can now con­fi­dent­ly say that we have a vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme by the next 12 weeks... June, Ju­ly, Au­gust...de­pend­ing on the ship­ping arrange­ments, we would be able to vac­ci­nate a sub­stan­tial amount of peo­ple,” Row­ley said.
He added: “We can now fair­ly, rea­son­ably say that we are at the be­gin­ning of what is re­quired to bring this in­fec­tion un­der con­trol, to have some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy re­turn­ing to our coun­try and lives.” 
Row­ley al­so re­vealed that based on cur­rent lo­cal vac­ci­na­tion fig­ures and mass vac­ci­na­tions in North Amer­i­ca, the Gov­ern­ment would move to re­open the coun­try’s bor­ders and re­move the en­try ex­emp­tion process that has been in place since, last March, in the next four to six weeks.