RISHARD KHAN
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

To­day (Fri­day 30 Sep­tem­ber 2022) is the last day par­ents will be able to get a first dose of the pae­di­atric Pfiz­er COVID-19 vac­cine for their 5 to 11-year-old chil­dren.

The vac­cines will ex­pire on Oc­to­ber 31, which means a first dose needs to be ad­min­is­tered by to­day, to al­low for the min­i­mum three-week dose in­ter­val to elapse for the sec­ond dose be­fore the med­i­cine goes bad.

In May, 43,200 dos­es were do­nat­ed by Spain, but up to Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 21, just 3,710 dos­es were ad­min­is­tered. Even if these were, hy­po­thet­i­cal­ly, all first dos­es it would mean over 82 per cent of the stock will be wast­ed come the end of Oc­to­ber.

Ac­cord­ing to fig­ures giv­en last week by the Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, 362,138 dos­es of COVID-19 vac­cines were wast­ed to date be­cause the pop­u­la­tion did not avail them­selves of it be­fore it ex­pired. The dos­es wast­ed were the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech's Comir­naty vac­cine and Ox­ford-As­traZeneca.

T&T re­ceived 684,970 dos­es of adult Pfiz­er COVID-19 vac­cines as do­na­tions from the Unit­ed States.  How­ev­er, on­ly 358,885 were ad­min­is­tered.

For Ox­ford-As­traZeneca, T&T re­ceived 277,220 through CO­V­AX and do­na­tions, but 241,167 were ad­min­is­tered.