Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is con­cerned that the num­ber of stu­dents turn­ing up for the Pfiz­er vac­cine has waned in re­cent weeks.

Ex­press­ing this dur­ing Sat­ur­day's vir­tu­al me­dia brief­ing host­ed by the Min­istry of Health (MOH), he said more adults are tak­ing ad­van­tage of the Pfiz­er vac­cine than the chil­dren, for whom it was ini­tial­ly in­tend­ed.

Chil­dren be­tween the ages of 12 to 18 years are el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive the Pfiz­er vac­cine.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, when this phase of the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme be­gan on Au­gust 18, an av­er­age of 3,004 chil­dren were vac­ci­nat­ed per day. How­ev­er, re­cent fig­ures show this has since fall­en to an av­er­age of 550 per day.

Urg­ing par­ents to take their chil­dren to be vac­ci­nat­ed as the ex­piry date for this batch of vac­cines was fast ap­proach­ing, he said, "Don’t let the num­bers lull us in­to a sense of com­pla­cen­cy. When you look at the re­sults, more adults are tak­ing ad­van­tage of the Pfiz­er vac­cine."

He said par­ents and chil­dren were not tak­ing ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be vac­ci­nat­ed, and it was ev­i­dent as the num­bers had plum­met­ed to about one-sixth of where they had be­gun.

Deyals­ingh said of the 90,000 school-aged stu­dents that are el­i­gi­ble for the Pfiz­er vac­cine, it was on­ly 33,540 or just over one-third of this fig­ure, that has so far come for­ward to be vac­ci­nat­ed with their first dose.

"Of that fig­ure, we have to mi­nus 230 which is the mi­grant pop­u­la­tion. Par­ents and chil­dren, we need you all to step up the plate in the com­ing weeks be­cause your win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty will start to close be­cause of ex­piry date is­sues, where we have to ad­min­is­ter the first dose by the mid­dle to end of Oc­to­ber."

He warned that we are not out of the woods yet with our chil­dren un­der the ages of 12-19.

Mean­while, a to­tal of 366 preg­nant women have since tak­en the Pfiz­er vac­cine and 9,011 peo­ple have tak­en the John­son and John­son (J&J) one-dose vac­cine.

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the low vac­cine num­bers be­ing record­ed in To­ba­go, he said, "For the To­ba­go mall yes­ter­day (Fri­day) to do 12...it speaks to a lev­el of vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy in To­ba­go that we re­al­ly need to talk to the per­sons of To­ba­go, please come out and get vac­ci­nat­ed."

He begged for un­der­stand­ing as he added, "The per­sons who are en­cour­ag­ing you to not get the vac­cine, they will not be there for you when you are ill, they will not be pro­vid­ing hos­pi­tal space and To­ba­go is al­ready chal­lenged. They will not mind your fam­i­ly if you die. They don’t have your best in­ter­est at heart."

Bet­ting shops to re­open

An­nounc­ing the re­open­ing of bet­ting shops un­der the TT safe zone ini­tia­tive, Deyals­ingh said pa­trons and em­ploy­ees in this in­dus­try will be re­quired to pro­vide proof of vac­ci­na­tion.

With the Book­mak­ers As­so­ci­a­tion be­ing giv­en per­mis­sion to re­open in Oc­to­ber, he said em­ploy­ers must en­sure their staff are vac­ci­nat­ed be­fore re­open­ing.

He said, “I have been au­tho­rized by the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter to say that the fol­low­ing in­dus­try will be a part of the TT Safe Zone in Oc­to­ber. In ad­di­tion to the casi­nos, restau­rants and so on, the bet­ting shops un­der the Book­mak­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T will be al­lowed to open when the Prime Min­is­ter press­es that par­tic­u­lar trig­ger or buzzer un­der the TT safe zone arrange­ment.

“We ask per­sons in those safe zones which are gear­ing up to be open once num­bers look good to get all your em­ploy­ees vac­ci­nat­ed, that is part of the pro­pos­al. Every­one work­ing in a rac­ing pool, bet­ting shop, with the Book­mak­er’s As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, please urge your em­ploy­ees to be vac­ci­nat­ed be­cause you would have to pro­vide some sort of proof of vac­ci­na­tion for your em­ploy­ees as we move for­ward.”