More am­bu­lances are be­ing pressed in­to ser­vice in the COVID-19 land­scape, but the so­lu­tion is vac­ci­na­tion rather than more re­sources, says Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

He gave the as­sur­ance yes­ter­day in Par­lia­ment in re­sponse to queries from Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Rush­ton Paray on is­sues with the am­bu­lance ser­vice in light of the re­cent spike in COVID cas­es. Paray seemed to have been re­fer­ring to an ex­clu­sive Guardian Me­dia re­port in yes­ter­day’s news­pa­per, which quot­ed Glob­al Med­ical Re­sponse of Trinidad and To­ba­go (GM­RTT) CEO Paul An­der­son con­firm­ing they were un­der ex­treme pres­sure due to the spike, with as many as 50 calls be­ing re­ceived dai­ly to trans­port COVID pa­tients to hos­pi­tals.

Deyals­ingh said GM­RTT, which has a fleet of 48, is be­ing asked to bring more of their fleet in­to op­er­a­tion. Of the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties’ fleet of 50, he said 12 are be­ing used for the trans­port of COVID cas­es.

Oth­er steps are al­so be­ing tak­en to deal with pa­tients, in­clud­ing step­ping up ca­pac­i­ty at Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency units to treat se­vere­ly ill peo­ple who are de­layed from go­ing to health fa­cil­i­ties. The A&E units are sep­a­rat­ed with iso­la­tion units so peo­ple can be eas­i­ly trans­ferred from am­bu­lances to A&Es, Deyals­ingh said. ICU ca­pac­i­ty has al­so been in­creased from 35 to 60 beds.

But Deyals­ingh said the so­lu­tion to the sit­u­a­tion isn’t in more re­sources but in cit­i­zens get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed.

“Forty-eight out of 52 in ICU to­day were un­vac­ci­nat­ed pa­tients and that’s the so­lu­tion—vac­ci­na­tion,” he said, adding sev­en oth­ers in HDUs who had been await­ing trans­port were al­so un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

“The prob­lems are mul­ti-fac­to­r­i­al and so­lu­tions are mul­ti-fac­to­r­i­al. We’re build­ing more ca­pac­i­ty but we’re ask­ing the un­vac­ci­nat­ed to as­sist by be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed.”

Deyals­ingh said am­bu­lance turn­around time, half hour to two hours, de­pend­ed on sani­tis­ing time. He added that T&T, dur­ing the on­go­ing pan­dem­ic, has nev­er run out of oxy­gen.

Deyals­ingh clashed with Paray, who asked whether Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to take mea­sures to pro­cure phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts from In­dia to re­duce the prod­ucts’ cost and whether Gov­ern­ment would al­low phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives from In­dia to bring more to ease drug short­ages

Deyals­ingh not­ed that to date, there are over 2,000 items reg­is­tered from In­dia used in &TT - many of which he de­tailed - in­clud­ing avail­able through the CDAP pro­gramme. Not­ing that Paray owns a phar­ma­cy, Deyals­ingh, who said the “short­age” query was based on a false premise, said Paray didn’t de­clare his in­ter­est as he was re­quired to.

“... So whose in­ter­est are you pur­su­ing? By this MP, who owns a phar­ma­cy, ask­ing what we’re do­ing to bring drugs in from In­dia, this is a se­ri­ous bla­tant con­flict of in­ter­est!”Deyals­ingh said, adding any coun­try can ap­ply to the Trade Min­istry to do busi­ness in T&T.

Paray said the phar­ma­cy was reg­is­tered as a fam­i­ly busi­ness and he rep­re­sents phar­ma­cies all over T&T.

On UNC MP Rudy In­dars­ingh’s query about fire ten­ders re­spond­ing to Mon­day’s fire at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said a fire ten­der and haz­ardous ma­te­r­i­al truck were on the scene but there was no need to use the lat­ter truck.

So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox was asked about a foren­sic au­dit on blank food cards be­ing signed by To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly of­fi­cials. She said her min­istry wasn’t in­volved there, as it was a mat­ter for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert re­it­er­at­ed Bud­get 2022 mea­sures to as­sist small/medi­um busi­ness­es and al­so spoke about spe­cial-pur­pose ar­eas—in­clud­ing via Ex­im Bank—to make for­eign ex­change avail­able. Paray said giv­en what Im­bert said, it seems there’s no Forex short­age and whether it was that banks are sti­fling Forex sup­plies to peo­ple. Im­bert said Gov­ern­ment would con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing the mar­ket and mak­ing Forex avail­able on a reg­u­lar ba­sis.