Sascha Wil­son

There have been no deaths re­lat­ing to the COVID-19 vac­cines, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health.

This fol­lows a re­cent Face­book post by a woman who claimed her 12-year-old niece died af­ter re­ceiv­ing the sec­ond dose of the Pfiz­er vac­cine.

Asked by Guardian Me­dia to ad­dress this claim dur­ing the min­istry’s COVID-19 vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards said, “At this point in time, the min­istry does not have any in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the death of a 12-year-old child post-vac­cine ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

Re­mind­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic that vac­cines are safe, ac­ces­si­ble and avail­able at the min­istry’s 109 health cen­tres, as well as mass vac­ci­na­tion sites, Ab­dool-Richards urged them to vac­ci­nate in or­der to re­duce the risk of hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion.

Se­nior Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Of­fi­cer at the min­istry, Al Alexan­der, al­so re­mind­ed the pub­lic against trust­ing non-cred­i­ble sources of in­for­ma­tion.

He said, “Thus far, there have been no deaths re­lat­ed to vac­ci­na­tions from COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tions.”

Re­mind­ing the pub­lic of the min­istry’s Au­gust 26 re­lease in­di­cat­ing this, he said, “The pub­lic is ad­vised to trust the Min­istry of Health web­sites and so­cial me­dia pages. If you see ru­mours go­ing around, please check on our sites to ver­i­fy these ru­mours. We do have ac­cu­rate and up-to-date in­for­ma­tion on our web­site and so­cial me­dia pages.”

Ab­dool-Richards al­so in­di­cat­ed that the sev­en na­tion­als in­fect­ed with the Delta vari­ant so far are do­ing clin­i­cal­ly well and have re­cov­ered. In her pre­sen­ta­tion, Ab­dool-Richards in­di­cat­ed that there has been a de­creased bur­den on the par­al­lel health care sys­tem.

“Over time and over the past three weeks, we have seen less ad­di­tion­al cas­es ad­mit­ted in­to the sys­tem and this is a good in­di­ca­tor at this point, be­cause it in­di­cates a de­creased bur­den on the over­all sys­tem.”

She not­ed that the to­tal num­ber of pa­tients in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem, which com­pris­es 16 in­sti­tu­tions, is 352.

But, she added, “Three times as many pa­tients are se­vere­ly and crit­i­cal­ly ill as op­posed to re­cov­er­ing pa­tients. This again em­pha­sis­es the need for COVID-19 pre­ven­tion through vac­ci­na­tion be­cause it re­al­ly em­pha­sis­es and un­der­scores that per­sons with COVID-19 can be­come se­vere­ly and crit­i­cal­ly ill and re­quire ICU and HDU care.

“We have been notic­ing a slow but con­sis­tent de­cline in the over­all oc­cu­pan­cy, which has been un­der 40 per cent since Ju­ly 15, 2021. At this point, I would like to in­di­cate that this trend can ac­tu­al­ly be re­versed so we are not pre­ma­ture­ly com­fort­ed by the low oc­cu­pan­cy.”

She al­so point­ed out that on­ly one of the nine hos­pi­tals for se­vere­ly ill and crit­i­cal COVID-19 pa­tients -Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal - is above the cau­tion thresh­old of 75 per cent.

Re­gard­ing the sev­en step down fa­cil­i­ties for re­cov­er­ing pa­tients, she said those fa­cil­i­ties are un­der 75 per cent. She said ward oc­cu­pan­cy is at 32 per cent, mean­ing three out of ten beds are cur­rent­ly oc­cu­pied.

While ICU lev­els are at 66 per cent, she said the av­er­age ICU oc­cu­pan­cy over the last month has been 80 per cent while HDU oc­cu­pan­cy is at 38 per cent with an av­er­age of 57 per cent.

Re­gard­ing the tra­di­tion­al health care sys­tem across the ten Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ments, she said there has been a min­i­mal num­ber of pa­tients re­quir­ing ad­mis­sion in­to the par­al­lel health care fa­cil­i­ty.

“At this time, this is a good in­di­ca­tor. Cur­rent­ly, this morn­ing there was one pa­tient at the ER­HA, one pa­tient at SWRHA A&E, three pa­tients at the NWRHA A&E and three pa­tients at the NCRHA,” Ab­dool-Richards said.

She re­mind­ed the pub­lic that vac­ci­na­tion is the key to pre­vent­ing them­selves and their loved ones from be­ing ad­mit­ted to the hos­pi­tal and it saves lives.