An­na-Lisa Paul

The Min­istry of Health’s (MoH) new vac­cine roll­out sys­tem has been de­scribed as a fail­ure and is be­ing heav­i­ly crit­i­cised for falling flat as it did not de­liv­er the much an­tic­i­pat­ed in­jec­tion of hope in­to the pan­icked pop­u­la­tion de­mand­ing COVID-19 vac­cines.

And in the midst of an over­whelm­ing call for the min­istry to ac­count for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive day of chaos and con­fu­sion that reigned at des­ig­nat­ed health cen­tres across Trinidad yes­ter­day – both Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram has main­tained a deaf­en­ing si­lence on the mat­ter.

It was on­ly on June 9 that Deyals­ingh an­nounced the new al­pha­bet sys­tem to be im­ple­ment­ed which would see per­sons whose sur­names fall in­to the var­i­ous blocks of five let­ters, be­ing ac­com­mo­dat­ed.

This new sys­tem came hours af­ter the min­istry an­nounced they would be do­ing away with the ap­point­ment sys­tem which had they ad­mit­ted, had not been work­ing well – and would in­stead em­ploy a first come/first served sys­tem at 36 health cen­tres.

All RHA heads are sched­uled to meet with the min­istry to­day.

Of­fer­ing the na­tion an un­re­served apol­o­gy Wednes­day morn­ing af­ter thou­sands turned up ex­pect­ing to be vac­ci­nat­ed based on their ar­rival time and place in the line, Deyals­ingh said the cat­e­gories would be­gin with A – E, fol­lowed by F - J and so on.

How­ev­er, this sys­tem did not go as smooth­ly as thought yes­ter­day as hun­dreds again turned up ex­pect­ing to get their first jab of the vac­cine so they could live up to gov­ern­ment’s call for them to vac­ci­nate and op­er­ate.

An­gry af­ter learn­ing that des­ig­nat­ed health cen­tres on­ly re­ceived 50 dos­es of the vac­cine each yes­ter­day, Ran­dolph Berry said he went to the San Juan Health Cen­tre around 6.30 am and was told that 50 names had al­ready been record­ed.

De­cid­ing to try his luck at the St Joseph En­hanced Health Cen­tre, Berry said he was dis­ap­point­ed to ar­rive and find long lines of per­sons out­side al­so.

De­ject­ed and dis­ap­point­ed af­ter be­ing turned away from the two places, he said, “I don’t know what I am go­ing to do now…I guess they say next week when they go back to A to E. It might be the same 50 peo­ple again. I might have to come and sleep here.”

Con­front­ed with the knowl­edge that this would con­sti­tute a breach of the 9 pm to 5 am cur­few cur­rent­ly in ef­fect, he said. “That is the next thing. I don’t know what re­al­ly go­ing on.”

A 65-year-old truck dri­ver from St Au­gus­tine who suf­fers with di­a­betes and whose last name starts with B, al­so voiced a sim­i­lar com­plaint af­ter he ar­rived at this health cen­tre around 6 am to find the of­fi­cials were no longer ac­cept­ing per­sons. He had pre­vi­ous­ly at­tempt­ed to se­cure a vac­cine us­ing the ap­point­ment sys­tem but had been un­suc­cess­ful then.

There has been con­fir­ma­tion from the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) and the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (ER­HA) that on­ly 50 vac­cines were dis­pensed to each health cen­tre yes­ter­day.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the NCRHA Davlin Thomas and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the ER­HA Ronald Tsoi-a-Fatt were un­able to say if this will be the norm go­ing for­ward.

Pressed to say why mass vac­ci­na­tion sites such as sta­di­ums and cin­e­mas were not used to ac­com­mo­date crowds which are main­ly con­sti­tut­ed of the el­der­ly and in­firmed, and why so lit­tle vac­cines are be­ing dis­pensed - both men di­rect­ed such queries to the MOH.

They both said that on­ly a few peo­ple with sur­names from each let­ter of the five-block al­pha­bet were vac­ci­nat­ed yes­ter­day. This works out to be on­ly ten per­sons per let­ter be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed dai­ly at each des­ig­nat­ed health cen­tre.

So for those who were un­able to get on the list yes­ter­day, they ad­mit­ted, “They will have to wait un­til their cy­cle comes back next week.”

A 59-year-old woman who was lucky enough to get num­ber 38 at the Barataria Health Cen­tre was turned away af­ter lin­ing up for more than 90 min­utes, af­ter nurs­ing per­son­nel said they were on­ly deal­ing with per­sons aged 60 and over.

She com­plained of hav­ing to wait an­oth­er week with­in a vac­cine as she said, “It will be the same big crowd again so it don’t make sense. The Gov­ern­ment say­ing one thing and then they telling you here you can’t get vac­ci­nat­ed be­cause you are not 60.”

Sim­i­lar com­plaints were record­ed from per­sons who vis­it­ed both the Diego Mar­tin and Care­nage Health Cen­tres.

Health cen­tres are due to dis­pense vac­cines to per­sons whose sur­names be­gin with the let­ters F – J to­day.

Dur­ing a ra­dio in­ter­view yes­ter­day morn­ing when he was ques­tioned as to why vac­cine num­bers were re­strict­ed to the low­er end of the scale at 50, Deyals­ingh laid this square­ly on the shoul­ders of the RHA heads.

He said, “The CEO’s who are in charge of the health cen­tres want­ed to be com­fort­able with an amount across the board so that the oth­er ser­vices in the health cen­tre could con­tin­ue like Child Guid­ance, the NCD’s Clin­ic, the Men­tal Health Clin­ic and so on.”

He claimed the CEO’s and the Min­istry of Health had agreed that, “At this stage, 50 was a com­fort­able num­ber bear­ing in mind that very soon, we are go­ing to have to start ad­min­is­ter­ing sec­ond dos­es of Sinopharm.”

The min­is­ter al­so sought to de­fend against a re­peat of what oc­curred on Wednes­day when scores turned up for the vac­cine.

He claimed re­ports yes­ter­day in­di­cat­ed that what hap­pened on Wednes­day had not been re­peat­ed – how­ev­er, NCRHA’s CEO ad­mit­ted to long lines again as he said, “We did have some dis­sat­is­fac­tion from peo­ple who came to be vac­ci­nat­ed and could not be ac­com­mo­dat­ed.”

Tsoi-a-Fatt, how­ev­er, re­port­ed no long lines and calm across the ER­HA’s reach as he said, “They were fair­ly well or­gan­ised. We had the sup­port of the TTPS but we re­al­ly didn’t need much sup­port be­cause every­thing was well or­gan­ised.”

Deyals­ingh claimed to have spo­ken with all RHA heads pri­or to Wednes­day’s first come/first served sys­tem be­ing rolled out.

The min­is­ter said the au­thor­i­ties had tar­get­ed spe­cif­ic sub-sets of vul­ner­a­ble per­sons on Wednes­day as they were the ones who were ei­ther suc­cumb­ing to the virus or re­quir­ing spe­cial­ized care.