Short­ly af­ter re­ceiv­ing a do­na­tion of over 300,000 Pfiz­er vac­cines from the US yes­ter­day morn­ing, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh was op­ti­mistic lo­cal au­thor­i­ties may be able to start vac­ci­nat­ing stu­dents from as ear­ly as next week.

Ad­dress­ing re­porters at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port af­ter tak­ing charge of the 305,370 vac­cines around 8 am, Deyals­ingh said once the vac­cines are pre­pared for use, they must be utilised with­in 30 days.

This is the largest vac­cine do­na­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go has re­ceived since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic be­gan.

Deyals­ingh said he was sched­uled to meet with Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials yes­ter­day to dis­cuss how soon they can be­gin ad­min­is­ter­ing the vac­cines to stu­dents.

“If all goes well, we want to start ad­min­is­ter­ing the vac­cines next week. Ear­ly next week, but we have to pre-plan.”

He said al­ter­na­tive sites may have to be used for stu­dent vac­ci­na­tions, in or­der to en­sure the process goes smooth­ly.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that Pfiz­er vac­cines would be re­served for stu­dents 12 years and old­er­—as this is the on­ly vac­cine ap­proved by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion for use in chil­dren—and will form part of the ef­fort to re­open schools in Sep­tem­ber.

Apart from this sec­ondary school co­hort, which is es­ti­mat­ed to be over 92,000, of­fi­cials are al­so tar­get­ing first-year uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents as part of the gen­er­al vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.

Hours af­ter the first tranche of Pfiz­er vac­cines ar­rived in this coun­try, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said min­istry of­fi­cials will be reach­ing out to school prin­ci­pals by to­day to de­ter­mine how vac­cineswill be ad­min­is­tered to stu­dents 12 years and old­er.

Re­spond­ing to What­sApp mes­sages yes­ter­day morn­ing seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on how soon the vac­ci­na­tion of the 81,000 pub­lic sec­ondary school stu­dents will be­gin and just how it will be done, Gads­by-Dol­ly ex­pressed joy that T&T’s young­sters now had a vac­ci­na­tion op­tion avail­able to them.

She said, “We are hap­py that our chil­dren in T&T now join the adults in hav­ing ac­cess to this op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

As­sur­ing par­ents and guardians that the min­istry will con­tact prin­ci­pals and the pub­lic by Au­gust 13 with de­tails of the vac­ci­na­tion roll­out for sec­ondary school stu­dents, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “The MoE is heart­ened by any mea­sure of pro­tec­tion that can be of­fered to our chil­dren against COVID-19.”

It is not yet known how many sec­ondary school stu­dents there are al­to­geth­er, as the num­bers pro­vid­ed by the min­istry do not in­clude stu­dents at­tend­ing pri­vate sec­ondary schools or pri­vate can­di­dates who do not at­tend full-time class­es.

Ques­tioned on how the ar­rival of the Delta vari­ant could im­pact plans to re­open schools, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “Ed­u­ca­tion­al con­ti­nu­ity is para­mount, and though on­line teach­ing is the best arrange­ment that can be of­fered when phys­i­cal school is not avail­able, it is glob­al­ly ac­knowl­edged that it can­not re­place the face to face in­ter­ac­tion that our young peo­ple so des­per­ate­ly need.”

Re­fer­ring to oth­er coun­tries that have re­sumed phys­i­cal class­es, she added, “We have been track­ing the many coun­tries that have been able to restart phys­i­cal school even in the pres­ence of the Delta vari­ant, and a crit­i­cal lay­er of pro­tec­tion has been the vac­ci­na­tion of chil­dren 12 and over, along with high rates of vac­cine up­take in the adult pop­u­la­tion.”

On Wednes­day, the Health Min­istry con­firmed T&T had reg­is­tered its first two cas­es of the Delta virus in re­turn­ing un­vac­ci­nat­ed na­tion­als from Mex­i­co and the US.

TTUTA en­cour­ages par­ents, stu­dents to get vac­ci­nat­ed

Mean­while, the first vice pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Mar­lon Seales is re­new­ing calls for teach­ers and par­ents to con­tin­ue to get vac­ci­nat­ed as it could re­duce the sever­i­ty of the COVID-19 virus if con­tract­ed.

Seales was un­able to say how many teach­ers have so far been vac­ci­nat­ed, as he ex­plained that this in­for­ma­tion would not be re­port­ed to them but rather, the MOE as part of the record-keep­ing process.

“We will point the min­istry to the OECS doc­u­ment which speaks to the clos­ing of the gap and how the mes­sag­ing is sup­posed to go to par­ents and stu­dents to en­cour­age them to be part of the vac­ci­na­tion process.

He said while they are ac­tive­ly en­cour­ag­ing per­sons to come for­ward and be vac­ci­nat­ed, “TTUTA is not in sup­port of manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tions.”

Par­ents Group: Class­room re­turn not fea­si­ble

De­spite the good news sur­round­ing the do­na­tion of the Pfiz­er vac­cines and vac­ci­na­tion of stu­dents, one par­ent group is ex­press­ing con­cern with the move to re­turn stu­dents to the phys­i­cal class­room.

The Move­ment for Con­cerned Par­ents said, “We don’t see that be­ing fea­si­ble at this point in time.”

Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Shami­la Ra­heem said sev­er­al fac­tors need­ed to be care­ful­ly con­sid­ered be­fore a re­turn to the class­room is pos­si­ble in­clud­ing the health and safe­ty of all stu­dents; space; su­per­vi­sion; co­or­di­na­tion; mask-wear­ing; so­cial dis­tanc­ing; and ad­e­quate san­i­ti­za­tion sup­plies.