As most un­vac­ci­nat­ed cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to re­ject COVID-19 vac­cines, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says it is un­like­ly that T&T will get an­oth­er do­na­tion of Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech dos­es from the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (US).

The Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment do­nat­ed 75,000 dos­es of the vac­cine to T&T on March 3, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of Pfiz­er vac­cines it grant­ed to this coun­try to 684,570.

The do­na­tion was part of the Biden-Har­ris Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s com­mit­ment to lead in the ef­fort to vac­ci­nate the world as part of a pledge to do­nate 1.2 bil­lion dos­es world­wide.

Speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health's week­ly COVID-19 Up­date, Deyals­ingh said there were 40,762 vac­cines re­main­ing with eight days left un­til ex­piry.

“We have not even used 50 per cent of it, so the chances of us get­ting the sec­ond tranche of 75 are go­ing to be close to ze­ro be­cause the pop­u­la­tion at this point in time does not seem to have the ap­petite for vac­cines. I made that point very clear­ly, and our col­leagues, the Unit­ed States, made that point to us very clear­ly that if we do not show an ap­petite for this, we may not get it,” Deyals­ingh said.

De­spite his pleas last week: for peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly teenagers, to ac­cept the vac­cines be­fore ex­piry, the Min­istry on­ly ad­min­is­tered 331 dos­es across all sites yes­ter­day. It in­cludes pri­ma­ry dos­es and boost­ers. As some coun­tries in the re­gion near the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion's tar­get of 70 per cent vac­ci­na­tion by mid-2022, T&T crawled to 51 per cent.

“I was able to an­nounce 51 per cent this morn­ing. But there is no re­joic­ing in that be­cause it took us months to get to 51 per cent, so that is where we are"

Re­porter: Kevon Felmine