SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Vac­cines at one of the Min­istry of Health’s mass vac­ci­na­tion sites ran out yes­ter­day, leav­ing dozens of hope­ful cit­i­zens dis­ap­point­ed.

They had turned up with­out ap­point­ments and wait­ed hours in line at the Grand Stand of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

But around 1 pm, they be­gan to leave in droves, hav­ing giv­en up for the day.

One woman who spoke to Guardian Me­dia anony­mous­ly said she had fol­lowed the es­tab­lished pro­ce­dure of send­ing her name and health in­for­ma­tion via What­sApp.

The woman said she sent sev­er­al mes­sages to the num­ber ad­ver­tised by the Min­istry of Health for the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) to book vac­cine ap­point­ments.

She re­ceived a re­sponse on Tues­day, telling her that an ap­point­ment had been made for her at the Pad­dock for 1pm on Wednes­day.

But when she showed up, she was turned away.

“A la­dy at the gate said ‘No, no, no, our last ap­point­ment is at 11 am, an­oth­er per­son is say­ing, “We have giv­en out all the vac­cines we have for the day” and there was no ex­pla­na­tion. They are ac­tu­al­ly doubt­ing the va­lid­i­ty of my What­sApp mes­sage and when I asked how do they ex­plain this (the text ex­change), they said, “We don’t know, the pol­i­cy changed at 7 pm last night (Tues­day,)” the woman said.

Close to tears, the woman ex­plained she has asth­ma and was very wor­ried about con­tract­ing COVID-19.

Guardian Me­dia spoke to a mem­ber of staff, who de­nied any­one had been turned away. The staff mem­ber said no ap­point­ments were made via What­sApp and those with ap­point­ments were called to come in.

She said the site’s vac­cine al­lo­ca­tion had run out and yes­ter­day was their last day in op­er­a­tion. She said the crowds wait­ing out­side the venue did not qual­i­fy for the vac­cine as all of them were un­der 60 and had no co­mor­bidi­ties.

The woman lat­er in­formed Guardian Me­dia that around 2pm, she was giv­en a vac­cine at the same site.

Checks at the Mor­vant Health Cen­tre, the Barataria Health Cen­tre and the Care­nage Health Cen­tre all re­vealed there were no vac­cines avail­able.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic, who showed up hop­ing to get vac­ci­nat­ed, were turned away and ad­vised to send What­sApp mes­sages to the NWRHA’s list­ed num­bers.

At all three fa­cil­i­ties, nurs­es said their vac­cine al­lo­ca­tion fin­ished on Tues­day.

At the Care­nage Health Fa­cil­i­ty, those who turned up were told to mon­i­tor the Min­istry of Health’s web­site and tra­di­tion­al me­dia sites for in­for­ma­tion.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said the pub­lic is be­ing di­rect­ed to the min­istry’s mass vac­ci­na­tion sites.

Those sites are the Pad­dock at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre in Tacarigua, the UTT Cam­pus in Char­lieville and the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts in San Fer­nan­do.

Deyals­ingh said the de­ci­sion to move all vac­ci­na­tions to these site was tak­en to pre­vent em­ploy­ee burnout.

“As we keep say­ing it’s the same work­ers who man every­thing from hos­pi­tals to step down to quar­an­tine to vac­ci­na­tion. Re­sources are lim­it­ed and it’s my job to man­age them ef­fec­tive­ly to serve the pub­lic and to pre­vent em­ploy­ee burnout. I again plead with the pub­lic to do their part,” Deyals­ingh said.