An­na-Lisa Paul

One day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ac­cept­ed blame for the wide­spread con­fu­sion that fol­lowed a call for per­sons to get vac­ci­nat­ed last week – scores of peo­ple turned up to re­ceive their sec­ond dose of the COVID-19 vac­cine at var­i­ous mass vac­ci­na­tion sites across the coun­try yes­ter­day.

De­spite the rain and gloomy skies, long lines of peo­ple could be seen shel­ter­ing un­der um­brel­las and hold­ing tow­els and rags over their heads as they wait­ed pa­tient­ly for their sec­ond jab at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA), San Fer­nan­do.

The ten,t which can ac­com­mo­date a small num­ber of peo­ple, re­mained filled through­out the day.

And while there was an ear­ly morn­ing line-up at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain – by 8 am, peo­ple had been screened and al­lowed to en­ter the fa­cil­i­ty where they were seat­ed on plas­tic chairs as they wait­ed for their sec­ond vac­cine.

An­tho­ny May­ers, who brought some­one to be vac­ci­nat­ed yes­ter­day, told Guardian Me­dia, “Every­thing out here re­al smooth.”

Hav­ing ar­rived around 7 am, May­ers, who re­ceived his sec­ond vac­cine last Mon­day, con­firmed there had been a crowd gath­ered very ear­ly but this was soon dis­persed as per­sons were al­lowed in to wait for the vac­ci­na­tion process to com­mence.

One woman, who gave her name on­ly as Gon­za­les, com­plained af­ter she was re­fused her sec­ond vac­cine be­cause it was on the day of her des­ig­nat­ed ap­point­ment.

This, even though she re­ceived a call from some­one di­rect­ing her to come in yes­ter­day.

Hav­ing re­ceived her first vac­cine on May 24, Gon­za­les said, “They called me and told me to come to­day (yes­ter­day) and now when I come, they telling me is next Mon­day I have to get it. I go­ing by the date they gave me on the phone.”

Dou­bly up­set af­ter she was turned away with­out the sec­ond shot, she said the mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion had al­so cost her a day of work.

“That made me mad be­cause it take me off the job when I could have gone to­day, so I will have to take an­oth­er day next week to come,” she said.

Un­hap­py about the in­con­ve­nience, she added, “It is not my fault, it is theirs. They should give peo­ple a prop­er date.”

She claimed, “That’s why plen­ty peo­ple are not tak­ing the vac­cine.”

At the St Joseph En­hanced Health Cen­tre and the Diego Mar­tin Health Cen­tre – there ap­peared to be a steady stream of per­sons com­ing in to re­ceive their sec­ond vac­cine.

At both lo­ca­tions, per­sons were screened and seat­ed un­der tents as they await­ed their turn.

At the Diego Mar­tin Health Cen­tre, a small hand-writ­ten note was post­ed to the front gate at the en­trance to the fa­cil­i­ty, which read, “Per­sons with ap­point­ments for sec­ond dose of Sinopharm COVID vac­cines are to keep their ap­point­ment date and time giv­en.”

Health of­fi­cials re­ceived 200,000 dos­es of the Sinopharm vac­cine from the Bei­jing In­sti­tute of Bi­o­log­i­cal Prod­ucts Com­pa­ny Ltd yes­ter­day.

These vac­cines will be used to pro­vide both first and sec­ond dos­es to mem­bers of the pub­lic.

On Sun­day, the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) ad­vised the pub­lic that in com­pli­ance with the na­tion­al guide­lines an­nounced on June 12 - the walk-in sys­tem for the first dose of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vac­cine, would cease with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

Of­fi­cials said a sched­uled ap­point­ment sys­tem will be im­ple­ment­ed for the el­der­ly pop­u­la­tion from age 65 and over from June 16.