The math is sim­ple, says Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. T&T's al­lot­ment of the vac­cines from the CO­V­AX Fa­cil­i­ty it spends mil­lions on will on­ly im­mu­nise 20 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion. It is a far cry from the 70 per cent need­ed for herd im­mu­ni­ty, said Mooni­lal yes­ter­day in Debe.
To­geth­er with Bar­rack­pore West coun­cil­lor Nicholas Kan­hai, Mooni­lal do­nat­ed a wheel­chair to Has­pathi Singh, who suf­fered mo­bil­i­ty loss through re­nal fail­ure com­pli­ca­tions. Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter, Mooni­lal said that the first batch ex­pect­ed in T&T in March rep­re­sents on­ly three per cent of what the Gov­ern­ment re­quest­ed. Es­ti­mat­ing that the pop­u­la­tion was 1.4 mil­lion, Mooni­lal said the coun­try needs 1.4 mil­lion dos­es to vac­ci­nate ap­prox­i­mate­ly 700,000 adults who qual­i­fy.
"This Gov­ern­ment has done noth­ing to reach out to the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia, like oth­er coun­tries in the Caribbean, to source vac­cines free of charge. The In­di­an High Com­mis­sion has con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment has not prop­er­ly ap­plied for that. What they have done, we sus­pect, is reach out to com­pa­nies in the world, but not the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia. That is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter," Mooni­lal said.
The CO­V­AX Fa­cil­i­ty aims to ac­cel­er­ate the de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­ture of COVID-19 vac­cines. It seeks to guar­an­tee fair and eq­ui­table ac­cess for every coun­try in the world. De­scrib­ing the sys­tem as strange, Mooni­lal said that the CO­V­AX Fa­cil­i­ty would look at a coun­try's COVID-19 sta­tis­tic and de­ter­mine how many vac­cines it would al­lo­cate.
"If you have a good record, the cas­es of COVID-19 is low, they will tell you, look, you don't de­serve it, an­oth­er coun­try with a high rate de­serves it. So even when you or­der, you won't get what you or­dered if your rate is low. In a lay­man's way, you could be pun­ished for do­ing well be­cause the vac­cines will go to oth­er coun­tries that have a high­er rate of in­fec­tion."
He said that at this time, the CO­V­AX Fa­cil­i­ty would not even pro­vide 20 per cent of what T&T re­quires. He said the Gov­ern­ment was mak­ing no ef­fort to get vac­cines else­where, an im­pend­ing cri­sis to the Gov­ern­ment vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.
Mooni­lal al­so called on Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to ex­plain the pro­to­cols com­pa­nies would fol­low to vac­ci­nate their em­ploy­ees. Say­ing that he took note of this Gov­ern­ment's pol­i­cy to al­low com­pa­nies to car­ry out their own pro­grammes, Mooni­lal ques­tioned whether com­pa­nies would fol­low the same process as the Min­istry of Health. He wants to know whether the com­pa­nies will iden­ti­fy em­ploy­ees who are at a high­er risk of con­tract­ing the virus or have co­mor­bidi­ties and en­sure they get the vac­cines first.
"There is a struc­ture of nine lev­els in which, clear­ly, per­sons over 75 years, who have co­mor­bidi­ties are first in line. Younger peo­ple who are healthy, let us say un­der 50, un­der 40 years, they are prob­a­bly last in line."