The Prime Min­is­ter has an­nounced that the gov­ern­ment has rolled back its de­ci­sion to end the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme and in­stead will con­tin­ue on us­ing the re­main­der of the vac­cines meant to be sec­ond dos­es for those who re­ceived their first jabs.

Speak­ing dur­ing a news con­fer­ence in Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go yes­ter­day the Prime Min­is­ter said the gov­ern­ment ex­pects the sec­ond tranche of As­traZeneca vac­cines be­ing sup­plied through the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty to ar­rive in this coun­try next month - May.

“ We have con­fir­ma­tion that we are to ex­pect an­oth­er sim­i­lar batch com­ing to us dur­ing the month of May. The Min­istry of Health ad­vised that they got doc­u­men­ta­tion of that ship­ment.”

But he said the Ital­ian em­bar­go on the ex­port of vac­cines might af­fect the ship­ment, prompt­ing the gov­ern­ment to re­verse a re­cent­ly an­nounced de­ci­sion.

“In an­tic­i­pa­tion of get­ting that, I have to­day agreed with the Min­istry of Health - the hold­ing in our hands now our 38,000 dos­es of vac­cines that we’re hold­ing, in the event that no more were com­ing to us in the very near fu­ture and that would have been used to be the sec­ond dose, on those per­sons who were vac­ci­nat­ed - we have tak­en a de­ci­sion to­day that we will use those vac­cines as first dose ap­pli­ca­tion for per­sons who are to be vac­ci­nat­ed.”

He added, “ What is the worst that can hap­pen? The worse that can hap­pen is that the sec­ond tranche does not get here. Its means that all 80,000 who were vac­ci­nat­ed, on­ly got one dose. The worst-case sce­nario is that one dose is a lot bet­ter than no dose.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said sci­en­tif­ic da­ta in­di­cat­ed that one dose gives 65 per cent pro­tec­tion to the vac­ci­nat­ed per­son.

It was on­ly this week, the Min­is­ter of Health an­nounced the pro­gramme would be end­ing.

But Dr Row­ley al­so ex­plained that some bad news re­ceived ear­li­er on Thurs­day prompt­ed the de­ci­sion to ad­min­is­ter what would have been the sec­ond dos­es of the vac­cine.

Dr Row­ley said the an­tic­i­pat­ed re­lease of some of the 60 mil­lion vac­cines to this coun­try and oth­ers by the Unit­ed States, may not hap­pen.

“This morn­ing the news was that some­thing hap­pened in the Unit­ed States in Bal­ti­more, where the pro­duc­tion of As­traZeneca was be­ing done and when the state­ments were be­ing made that the Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to en­sure the safe­ty of what will be­come avail­able for dis­tri­b­u­tion, the ini­tial thought was that it had to do with the ex­pi­ra­tion date. What we dis­cov­ered to­day is that the ex­am­i­na­tion at the fac­to­ry, where it is be­ing pro­duced, is that there were con­t­a­m­i­na­tions with vac­cine one, with vac­cine two.”

He said the gov­ern­ment is await­ing con­fir­ma­tion on that is­sue.

The Prime Min­is­ter re­it­er­at­ed the scarci­ty of vac­cines on the mar­ket, say­ing the CO­V­AX mech­a­nism avail­able to Caribbean coun­tries, did not re­ceive its ex­pect­ed sup­ply.

“As head of a Gov­ern­ment, I can tell you we can­not buy a sin­gle vac­cine in the world. The vac­cines are in the pos­ses­sion of peo­ple who have de­cid­ed that they will use it for them­selves and on­ly when they are sat­is­fied that they have been vac­ci­nat­ed then they will look in our di­rec­tion.”

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter warned that the use of vac­cines does not mean there should be com­pla­cen­cy.

He ex­plained that when the gov­ern­ment rolled out its vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme, peo­ple be­gan to pay less at­ten­tion to COVID-19 pro­to­cols and this may have re­sult­ed in the re­cent con­tin­ued spike in new COVID cas­es.

Dr Row­ley said he saw a change in be­hav­iour once the vac­cines ar­rived.

“ I could tell you as a per­son who has been mon­i­tor­ing this dai­ly, I saw the re­lax­ation when the vac­cines were au­tho­rized when vac­cines start­ed to be dis­trib­uted, and even though the vac­cines were avail­able in small num­bers, the gen­er­al con­ver­sa­tion, the gen­er­al re­ac­tion of the pop­u­la­tion was to let our guard down.”

He added: “The vac­cine sea­son caused us to lose sight of the fact, that it’s (vac­cine) is not a cure.”

The Prime Min­is­ter added that vac­cines mere­ly re­duce the ef­fects of COVID if per­sons be­come in­fect­ed.