Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The re­cent news of promis­ing pre­lim­i­nary re­sults from two COVID-19 vac­cine can­di­dates has placed a light at the end of the tun­nel and led the Min­istry of Health to be­gin prepa­ra­tions for the de­liv­ery of one of them. 

Over the past two weeks, news has bro­ken that ear­ly re­ports in­di­cate the vac­cines be­ing de­vel­oped by Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na could of­fer close to 95 per cent pro­tec­tion from the virus. 
But ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Mod­er­na’s can­di­date is more fea­si­ble for T&T. 

“The ad­van­tage of the Mod­er­na vac­cine, which we look for­ward to, is that the Mod­er­na vac­cine can be stored at much high­er tem­per­a­tures than the Pfiz­er vac­cine,” Deyals­ingh said dur­ing a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day. 

The Pfiz­er vac­cine needs to be stored at be­tween -70 to -80 de­grees Cel­cius, a lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenge for many coun­tries. How­ev­er, the Mod­er­na vac­cine can be stored at around -20 de­grees Cel­cius for up to six months. 

“Lo­gis­ti­cal­ly, that (Mod­er­na op­tion) is a huge im­prove­ment which would make it eas­i­er to store and dis­trib­ute the vac­cines,” Deyals­ingh said. 

The Mod­er­na vac­cine can al­so be thawed and kept be­tween two to eight de­grees Cel­cius for 30 days and is sta­ble at room tem­per­a­ture for 12 hours. Ac­cord­ing to Deyals­ingh, this is sim­i­lar to the con­di­tions for most vac­cines used in the coun­try. 

“That is good news again. It means that our cur­rent dis­tri­b­u­tion from a cen­tral repos­i­to­ry does not have to change sig­nif­i­cant­ly,” he said.

He said the min­istry has al­ready cho­sen three sites to store the vac­cine—two in Trinidad and one in To­ba­go. 
“The main hub will be at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal. That is the cur­rent think­ing. There was a site vis­it there yes­ter­day (Tues­day). That would be our main stor­age and main dis­tri­b­u­tion hub,” he said.

The oth­er stor­age fa­cil­i­ties would be the C40 Cen­tral Stores in Ch­aguara­mas and one in To­ba­go, which, he said, would be a “re­dun­dan­cy in case some­thing hap­pens at Cou­va.”
But to store the vac­cines at the re­quired tem­per­a­ture, Deyals­ingh said walk-in chillers will have to be built at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and the fa­cil­i­ty in To­ba­go. 

“In that walk-in chiller, we would be or­der­ing now the ul­tra cold-chain freez­ers to store the vac­cines. These are like your in­di­vid­ual re­frig­er­a­tors. So just think about a big room with re­frig­er­a­tors stacked up in­side of it,” he said. 

Deyals­ingh said lat­er this week a fi­nal de­ci­sion will be made on whether five, eight or 10 freez­ers will be or­dered, “be­cause we have to talk to PA­HO to find out in what pos­si­ble vol­umes and quan­ti­ties we’d be get­ting the vac­cines.”
He said two ad­di­tion­al rooms will need to be con­struct­ed—a prep room for work­ers to don their warm cloth­ing and a step-down room for the vac­cines to thaw. 

He said the min­istry had con­vened a mul­ti-pronged team to ex­plore all lo­gis­ti­cal as­pects of the vac­cine, from stor­age to dis­tri­b­u­tion, some two months ago and was al­so close to fig­ur­ing out how to dis­trib­ute it. 

Deyals­ingh was un­able to give a fig­ure on how much the up­grades to fa­cil­i­tate stor­age and dis­tri­b­u­tion of the vac­cine will cost tax­pay­ers. 

“We are now work­ing out those es­ti­mates...be­cause we on­ly now know the tem­per­a­tures that we have to work with. So site vis­its were done yes­ter­day (Tues­day) to Cou­va, we have worked out di­men­sions, now we have to go out to get quotes and so on,” he said. 

He al­so as­sured there was enough fund­ing with­in the min­istry’s bud­get al­lo­ca­tion to al­low for the up­grades.

The min­is­ter’s op­ti­mism in the Mod­er­na vac­cines is al­so at­trib­uted to it be­ing tied to the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty. T&T has bought in­to the fa­cil­i­ty and un­der the terms of it, will be able to re­ceive enough vac­cine dos­es to cov­er 20 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion in the first in­stance. These 280,000 dos­es will go ini­tial­ly to front­line work­ers such as doc­tors, the el­der­ly and the im­muno­com­pro­mised, he said.
Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the Bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment over a month ago, Deyals­ingh had said the Gov­ern­ment had al­lo­cat­ed US$9,741,237 (TT$66,142,999.23) for the pur­chase of vac­cines.