The Min­is­ter of Health says that com­ments made by Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal that cit­i­zens of this coun­try will be used as guinea pigs for the re­cent­ly ap­proved Sinopharm Bei­jing vac­cine are er­ro­neous.

He says these com­ments on­ly re­in­force the MP’s de­lib­er­ate at­tempts to de­rail the coun­try’s vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve. The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from the Min­istry of Health:

The Min­is­ter of Health strong­ly con­demns the re­cent un­found­ed state­ments made by the UNC Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Dr. Roodal Mooni­lal, on the Sinopharm Bei­jing COVID-19 vac­cine, as the ut­ter­ances are base­less and not ground­ed in sci­ence or fact.

The fact is the COVID-19 Sinopharm Bei­jing vac­cine has un­der­gone a rig­or­ous World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) vac­cine as­sess­ment, which in­clud­ed on-site in­spec­tions of the pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty pri­or to the WHO of­fi­cial ap­proval of the Sinopharm Bei­jing vac­cine for the Emer­gency Use List­ing Pro­ce­dure (EUL) on May 7th 2021.

The WHO As­sess­ment is the same re­view process used for Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na, John­son and John­son and As­traZeneca COVID-19 vac­cines, which all cur­rent­ly have EUL ap­proval. The fact is MP Mooni­lal al­so re­ceived the same As­traZeneca vac­cine which has EUL ap­proval.

The Sinopharm Bei­jing vac­cine has been au­tho­rized for use in 45 coun­tries/ju­ris­dic­tions and over 65 mil­lion dos­es of the Sinopharm vac­cine have been ad­min­is­tered through var­i­ous emer­gency use pro­grams.

The Emer­gency Use List­ing (EUL) is a risk-based pro­ce­dure for as­sess­ing and list­ing vac­cines, with the ul­ti­mate aim of ex­pe­dit­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of these prod­ucts to peo­ple af­fect­ed by a pub­lic health emer­gency. The Min­is­ter re­minds MP Mooni­lal and his co­horts that COVID-19 is a glob­al pub­lic health emer­gency, apt­ly list­ed as the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic.

WHO has con­firmed the Sinopharm Bei­jing vac­cine as hav­ing a very good safe­ty and ef­fi­ca­cy pro­file. On the ba­sis of all avail­able ev­i­dence, the Sinopharm vac­cine ef­fi­ca­cy is es­ti­mat­ed at 78.1% for all age groups 18 years and over.

The er­ro­neous com­ments made by MP Mooni­lal that Trinidad and To­ba­go will be used as guinea pigs on­ly re­in­forces the MP’s de­lib­er­ate at­tempts to de­rail the coun­try’s vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve and re­in­forces the con­tin­u­ous ad­verse po­si­tion by the Op­po­si­tion, led by Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar, to any­thing pos­i­tive for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Min­is­ter re­bukes the fal­si­fi­ca­tions by MP Mooni­lal and the con­tin­u­ous neg­a­tive de­lib­er­a­tions by the Op­po­si­tion to cre­ate con­fu­sion in the so­ci­ety and thwart the over­all ob­jec­tive by the Min­istry of Health and the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, to pro­tect and save lives.

All vac­cines pro­cured on be­half of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go are se­lect­ed based on the ro­bust stan­dards of the WHO and ab­solute­ly no COVID-19 vac­cine will be ad­min­is­tered with­out WHO ap­proval. To date, all COVID-19 vac­cines ad­min­is­tered in Trinidad and To­ba­go have re­ceived Emer­gency Use Li­cense (EUL) un­der the WHO.

The se­lec­tion of vac­cines will al­ways be based on the safe­ty of the lives of all cit­i­zens in Trinidad and To­ba­go, which is the Num­ber 1 pri­or­i­ty for the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Min­istry of Health.