One hun­dred thou­sand (100,000) dos­es of the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­proved Sinopharm COVID-19 vac­cine, which were man­u­fac­tured by the Bei­jing In­sti­tute of Bi­o­log­i­cal Prod­ucts Co. Lim­it­ed, land­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port at 1:09 am this morn­ing, Wednes­day 19th May 2021.

Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, was on hand to re­ceive the vac­cines, which were do­nat­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of the Peo­ple's Re­pub­lic of Chi­na.

The vac­cines be­gan their jour­ney to Trinidad and To­ba­go ear­ly on Tues­day morn­ing, when they were shipped from the Bei­jing air­port.

Con­fir­ma­tion came from Chi­nese Am­bas­sador Fang Qiu in his so­cial me­dia pages.

“Con­firmed. 100,000 Chi­nese vac­cines have been shipped from Bei­jing air­port en route to Port of Spain.  Heart­felt thanks to my dear Chi­nese and Tri­ni col­leagues in Bei­jing and Port of Spain who ex­hib­it­ed ex­em­plary ded­i­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion to achieve the most ef­fi­cient de­liv­ery of the vac­cines,” the so­cial me­dia post from His Ex­cel­len­cy said.

The Chi­nese Am­bas­sador con­tin­ued to track the move­ment of the pre­cious car­go as it made its way to this coun­try.  There was a brief stopover in Toron­to, Cana­da, be­fore the fi­nal leg of the jour­ney home to sweet T&T.

“Af­ter a smooth trans­fer of con­sign­ment at Toron­to air­port, the 100,000 Chi­nese vac­cines are reach­ing near­er to T&T,” he re­port­ed at about 9 pm on Tues­day night.

“Thanks go to Hainan Air­lines, Caribbean Air­lines and CAINIAO for their con­cert­ed ef­forts en­abling this safe and swift de­liv­ery. CAINIAO, a tech-dri­ven glob­al lo­gis­tics so­lu­tions provider in Chi­na, al­so of­fered the in­no­v­a­tive re­al-time tem­per­a­ture mon­i­tor­ing ser­vice... I be­lieve new mod­els of Chi­na-TT part­ner­ship like this will gen­er­ate enor­mous im­pe­tus to post-COVID re­cov­ery,” he said.

His Ex­cel­len­cy pledged Chi­na’s com­mit­ment “to sup­port­ing T&T in its on­go­ing ef­forts to mit­i­gate the pan­dem­ic and re­store nor­mal­cy to the coun­try”.

About the Sinopharm Bei­jing vac­cine

The Sinopharm Bei­jing vac­cine re­ceived WHO ap­proval for emer­gency use on May 7th. It is an in­ac­ti­vat­ed vac­cine, sim­i­lar to the flu and po­lio vac­cines.  Like all oth­er avail­able COVID-19 vac­cines, Sinopharm Bei­jing is high­ly ef­fec­tive in pre­vent­ing se­vere dis­ease and hos­pi­tal­iza­tion due to COVID-19.

The WHO says the vac­cine is not rec­om­mend­ed for per­sons younger than 18 years of age, pend­ing the re­sults of fur­ther stud­ies in that age group.  How­ev­er, it can be of­fered to peo­ple who have had COVID-19 in the past.  The rec­om­men­da­tion is that for­mer COVID pa­tients wait six months be­fore be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed.

The WHO Strate­gic Ad­vi­so­ry Group of Ex­perts (SAGE) on Im­mu­niza­tion rec­om­mends the use of BIBP vac­cine as 2 dos­es (0.5 ml) giv­en in­tra­mus­cu­lar­ly.  The WHO rec­om­mends an in­ter­val of 3–4 weeks be­tween the first dose and the sec­ond dose.

“If the sec­ond dose is ad­min­is­tered less than 3 weeks af­ter the first, the dose does not need to be re­peat­ed. If ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sec­ond dose is de­layed be­yond 4 weeks, it should be giv­en at the ear­li­est pos­si­ble op­por­tu­ni­ty. It is rec­om­mend­ed that all vac­ci­nat­ed in­di­vid­u­als re­ceive two dos­es,” the WHO ad­vis­es.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram re­cent­ly not­ed in a me­dia con­fer­ence that a short­er time be­tween dos­es is good, be­cause that means ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple in a short­er space of time, which can help this coun­try get to herd im­mu­ni­ty against COVID-19 that much quick­er.

For more on the Sinopharm Bei­jing vac­cine, vis­it https://www.who.int/news-room/fea­ture-sto­ries/de­tail/the-sinopharm-covid-19-vac­cine-what-you-need-to-know .