With over 1.2 mil­lion COVID-19 vac­cine dos­es ad­min­is­tered, the Min­istry of Health has on­ly ten re­ports of ad­verse re­ac­tions. These in­clude blood clots and my­ocardi­tis. 

At the min­istry’s COVID-19 up­date on Wednes­day, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh com­pared this fig­ure to the 1800-plus deaths among un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple.

Deyals­ingh said the el­i­gi­ble pop­u­la­tion for COVID-19 vac­cines was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1 mil­lion adults and an es­ti­mat­ed 100,000 chil­dren be­tween the ages of 12-18. Up un­til Wednes­day, the num­ber of peo­ple with a com­plete vac­cine regime (one and two-dose vac­cines) was 630,781, rep­re­sent­ing 45.1 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion. 

In terms of par­tial vac­ci­na­tions, there were 634,603, rep­re­sent­ing 45.3 per cent. So far, 6639 peo­ple have re­ceived their ad­di­tion­al pri­ma­ry dose. With less than 50 per cent com­plete vac­ci­na­tion, Deyals­ingh said this was not good enough.

He said so­ci­ety now has a role to play in how T&T nav­i­gates the pan­dem­ic mov­ing for­ward. 

While some peo­ple be­lieve their im­mune sys­tem can fight COVID-19, Dr Chad Bisam­bar says the risk of se­vere ill­ness and death is high­er in di­a­bet­ic pa­tients.

Bisam­bar is an en­docri­nol­o­gist, di­a­betol­o­gist and COVID-19 con­sul­tant at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty.

He said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 13 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is di­a­bet­ic.

No­vem­ber is Di­a­betes Aware­ness Month, and as the coun­try ob­served World Di­a­betes Day last week Sun­day, he said peo­ple need­ed to man­age their con­di­tions.

Bisam­bar refers pa­tients to the In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) and the High De­pen­den­cy Unit (HDU) of the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mu­til­train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty dai­ly. Many of them have un­con­trolled di­a­betes and re­quire in­tra­venous in­sulin for con­trol.

How­ev­er, he said that if a per­son man­ages their di­a­betes well, there is a less­er like­li­hood of their COVID-19 in­fec­tion be­com­ing se­vere.

“We do know that COVID-19 can cause in­sulin re­sis­tance, and it is now re­port­ed to af­fect the pan­creas it­self that pro­duces in­sulin. Cer­tain med­ica­tion that we use for COVID-19 in­fec­tion in­cludes steroids. That can al­so cause high blood glu­cose lev­els,” Bisam­bar said.

Med­ical teams are now screen­ing pa­tients with high blood glu­cose lev­els for di­a­betes on ad­mit­tance be­cause many are asymp­to­matic and do not know they have di­a­betes.

Bisam­bar said all ap­proved COVID-19 vac­cines are safe and ef­fec­tive for peo­ple with di­a­betes as it builds an­ti­bod­ies and teach­es their im­mune sys­tem how to fight the coro­n­avirus.

Among the side ef­fects of the vac­cine is high blood sug­ar lev­els.

He is ad­vis­ing di­a­bet­ic peo­ple to mon­i­tor their sug­ar lev­els up to 48 hours af­ter re­ceiv­ing their shots.

Apart from en­sur­ing they fol­low all pub­lic health guide­lines, he ad­vis­es them to take all their med­ica­tion rec­om­mend­ed by their doc­tor.

He al­so said peo­ple with di­a­betes should have a sup­ply of med­ica­tion to last for a month. It would be help­ful in case they have to quar­an­tine. —KEVON FELMINE