SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Shar­lene.ram­per­sad@

guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go will re­ceive an­oth­er batch of the As­traZeneca vac­cine from the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty by the end of next week.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Health said 33,600 dos­es of the vac­cine are due to ar­rive be­fore next Fri­day.

The min­istry said this sec­ond batch from CO­V­AX and the re­main­ing dos­es from the batch do­nat­ed by the In­di­an gov­ern­ment will be held to guar­an­tee a sec­ond dose to those who al­ready got their first dose.

The min­istry said up un­til Wednes­day, 55,895 peo­ple were vac­ci­nat­ed.

It said it is hop­ing to have 60,000 peo­ple vac­ci­nat­ed in this first phase—which means about 4,105 peo­ple can still be vac­ci­nat­ed.

The min­istry’s state­ment said 480 peo­ple have al­ready re­ceived the sec­ond dose.

“Due to this re­cent pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment, the min­istry will be wind­ing down this stage of vac­cine ad­min­is­tra­tion for first dos­es. Sub­se­quent de­liv­er­ies of the COVID-19 vac­cine will be used to vac­ci­nate oth­er el­i­gi­ble mem­bers of the pop­u­la­tion,” the re­lease stat­ed.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed all four of the coun­try’s mass vac­ci­na­tion sites and found two - the UTT Cam­pus in Char­lieville, Ch­agua­nas and the Pad­dock at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain — closed.

Dozens of peo­ple who showed up at the UTT cam­pus in Char­lieville with ap­point­ments to be vac­ci­nat­ed left dis­ap­point­ed.

They met closed gates and had trou­ble get­ting any in­for­ma­tion about whether the vac­ci­na­tion ex­er­cise was on­go­ing or if it would be restart­ed.

When they ar­rived, there were no se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers or staff present to tell them the fa­cil­i­ty was closed.

A se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer came out briefly to in­form a small group of peo­ple with ap­point­ments that the site was closed.

A Guardian Me­dia news team was present at that time.

The of­fi­cer did not re­turn to the gates to give in­for­ma­tion to any­one else who came af­ter.

Frus­trat­ed and des­per­ate, those peo­ple parked in their cars out­side the locked gates wait­ed.

One man and his el­der­ly fa­ther had come from Tu­na­puna for their ap­point­ment, which had been set for 1 pm.

The man, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said that was his third vis­it to the site.

“We came on Tues­day, af­ter be­ing giv­en an ap­point­ment at the St Joseph Health fa­cil­i­ty. When we got here, they said our names were not on the list,” he said.

He re­vis­it­ed St Joseph and was told it was an ad­min­is­tra­tive er­ror that would be cor­rect­ed.

On Wednes­day, he re­turned to the UTT cam­pus but was again turned away.

Lat­er that day, he was in­formed their ap­point­ment had been set for 1 pm yes­ter­day.

“I know the health sys­tem is un­der some strain...but this is dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to come over and over with­out get­ting through and now the site is closed,” he said.

He said he was hope­ful his fa­ther would re­ceive a vac­cine, as he suf­fers from hy­per­ten­sion and di­a­betes.

At the St Joseph Health fa­cil­i­ty, a woman had a sim­i­lar sto­ry.

She said she had vis­it­ed the UTT cam­pus yes­ter­day morn­ing and was turned away.

She did not have an ap­point­ment but as she list­ed her co­mor­bidi­ties, she be­came emo­tion­al.

“I’ve been in this line since be­fore sev­en o’clock. When I reached up, they said I could not get the vac­cine, they on­ly had a few re­main­ing. I left, I went back in­to my car, I cried out my eyes and I came back hop­ing there were one or two that I could get it,” she said.

She brought her bag of med­ica­tion - for hy­per­ten­sion, di­a­betes and an au­toim­mune dis­ease - to show to the doc­tors and nurs­es, hop­ing it would im­prove her chances of get­ting the vac­cine.

She said she felt help­less be­ing un­able to get the vac­cine. But she vowed not to give up, say­ing she would vis­it the sites where vac­cines were avail­able every day un­til she gets it.