Gail Alexan­der

Next stop on the COVID vac­cine hunt—Gov­ern­ment will be seek­ing vac­cines from the Eu­ro­pean Union.

And the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA is ex­pand­ing to try to do sur­veil­lance test­ing for COVID-19 virus vari­ants across the pop­u­la­tion ahead.

Plan­ning Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is spoke about sourc­ing EU vac­cines, re­spond­ing to Op­po­si­tion query dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­ment sit­ting.

Robin­son–Reg­is replied on last Fri­day’s state­ments by the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) Health Com­mis­sion­er that the EU is de­vel­op­ing a mech­a­nism to fa­cil­i­tate the shar­ing of sur­plus COVID-19 vac­cines with de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.

She said T&T is fol­low­ing up with the EU to ad­vo­cate for a por­tion of these vac­cines. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion will be sent by cor­re­spon­dence from the Prime Min­is­ter and via T&T’s Am­bas­sador to the EU.

Robin­son-Reg­is said the For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter was al­so en­gag­ing with the EU for ac­cess to their stock of vac­cine even pri­or to last Fri­day an­nounce­ments. He pre­vi­ous­ly met the EU del­e­ga­tion in T&T and had talks on eq­ui­table ac­cess to vac­cines for T&T and for Cari­com.

The EU joins oth­er po­ten­tial vac­cines sources on T&T’s list.

T&T has ob­tained from Bar­ba­dos, CO­V­AX, In­dia, Chi­na, St Vin­cent, Bermu­da and has been hope­ful for vac­cines from the US, African Med­ical Coun­cil, Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na and John­son and John­son—and if Cu­ba’s vac­cines gets ap­proved.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, who was asked about types of vari­ants in T&T, said on­ly two COVID vari­ants have been iden­ti­fied in T&T—the B117 (UK Vari­ant) and P1 (Brazil­ian vari­ant).

Vari­ants are cat­e­gorised as vari­ants of in­ter­est, con­cern or high con­se­quence. He couldn’t sup­ply the num­ber of cas­es for ei­ther cat­e­go­ry.

He said since De­cem­ber 2020, some 504 sam­ples were test­ed and out of that, the two vari­ants of con­cern were iden­ti­fied.

He said the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency’s process (CARPHA) tests sam­ples main­ly from repa­tri­at­ed peo­ple as such per­sons may bring in vari­ants.

Their pri­ma­ry con­tacts par­tic­u­lar­ly are al­so test­ed. Deyals­ingh said CARPHA’s ex­pand­ing to try to do some sur­veil­lance test­ing across the pop­u­la­tion. He said UWI was put in touch with Pub­lic Health Eng­land’s di­vi­sions to boost (UWI’s) ca­pac­i­ty to test for vari­ants whether vari­ants of in­ter­est, con­cern or high con­se­quence.

Deyals­ingh rub­bished as “un­true,” re­ports of oxy­gen short­age at pub­lic health lo­ca­tions.

He de­tailed oxy­gen amounts at Point Fortin (five 240 cu­bic foot cylin­der), Ari­ma (one 2,220 cu­bic foot cylin­der giv­ing oxy­gen every 90 min­utes), To­ba­go (pro­duc­ing their own at Scar­bor­ough and Rox­bor­ough hos­pi­tals).

Massy Gas­es nor­mal­ly sup­plies 3 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per month. They were asked to go up to 50 per cent re­serve ca­pac­i­ty. In the first three weeks of May, 25 per cent more oxy­gen was con­sumed than was used in April —TT$4.2 mil­lion worth of oxy­gen.

Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said his min­istry is in talks with the Fi­nance Min­istry on whether taxi/maxi taxi op­er­a­tors would re­ceive the Fu­el Re­lief Grant.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said it wasn’t pos­si­ble to give the min­i­mum wait time for ap­pli­cants to re­ceive pay­ment sub­se­quent to sub­mis­sion of salary re­lief grant ap­pli­ca­tions, as the process in­volved doc­u­ment re­views, el­i­gi­bil­i­ty de­ter­mi­na­tion and if they have ac­tive bank ac­count. If they meet all cri­te­ria, pay­ment is three to four weeks af­ter ap­pli­ca­tion.