Rishard Khan
Senior Paediatric Emergency Medicine Specialist at the North Central Regional Health Authority (NCRHA), Dr Joanne Paul, yesterday dismissed concerns raised by nine doctors over the use of paediatric Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines on children ages five to 11.
Speaking on CNC3’s The Morning Brew programme, Paul expressed her respect for some of the signatories to the complaint, noting some of them taught her in medical school. However, she referred to their concerns as “protesting just to protest.”
“If you look at it, it’s just a few colleagues who’ve come out. But all societies like the Trinidad and Tobago Medical Association, so I’m talking about the association that represents all of us, have said to the Government and the population – we recommend this. The Paediatric Society, who are the lead for all paediatricians, have said they recommend this,” Paul said.
She said apart from local entities, major international groups such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) also endorse the drug’s use.
She also pointed out inconsistencies in the group’s claims, which do not hold true.
“When you look at the...few colleagues who have been saying that they disagree — the reasons are not really clear. It’s things like they are saying it’s mandatory. It isn’t so - that’s number one. Then they’re saying there hasn’t been enough discussion with the ministry, there has,” she said.
She also dismissed the group’s claims that not enough research was done on the vaccine to ensure its safety.
Apart from the international trials run to approve the vaccine, she said T&T also has available information from larger countries that have already established their rollout of the medicine for children.
“We have a whole gamut of trials right now, real-time, so as I said before, we’ve had for this vaccine at least 10 million (doses administered). So if you’re saying not enough trials - we have a whole trial of 10 million people in the US, 10 million children 5 to 11 who’ve had this vaccine (with) no adverse events, all good,” she said.
Last week, a letter was published in the newspapers calling on the Government to rethink its vaccination plan for children five to 11.
In essence, it claimed the benefit of vaccinating all children in this age group did not outweigh the risks.
The letter was signed by doctors Feroze Omardeen, David Strisiver, David Bratt, Nilash Ramnarine, Rajiv Seeraram, Keith Koo Min Chee, Gautam Tewarie, Sharon Lackan and Johnny Siu Chong.
