Gail Alexan­der

Vac­cines will be avail­able ahead for chil­dren five to 11 years old once their par­ents agree to it.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says Gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly in the process of ac­quir­ing a new batch of pae­di­atric Pfiz­er vac­cines for the 5 to 11 age group.

“This is to en­sure T&T’s chil­dren are well-pro­tect­ed once par­ents agree to make use of these World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­proved vac­cines,” Row­ley added in his state­ment to Par­lia­ment on Fri­day.

Row­ley said there was a sig­nif­i­cant de­crease in the num­ber of hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions and deaths aris­ing from the new vari­ant of con­cern–Omi­cron–now T&T’s dom­i­nant vari­ant.

How­ev­er, there was an in­crease in the num­ber of pae­di­atric in­fec­tions that sub­se­quent­ly led to an in­crease in hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions among chil­dren.

He added, “This may have been at­trib­uted to the in­her­ent vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of this age group to in­fec­tion cou­pled with the fact that vac­ci­na­tion with­in this group was com­par­a­tive­ly low.

“This was so be­cause WHO on­ly grant­ed Emer­gency Use List­ing for the Pfiz­er vac­cine for the 12to 15 age group on June 15, 2021, and for the 5 to 11-year-old age group, on Jan­u­ary 21, 2022.”

In the process of ac­quir­ing a new batch of pae­di­atric Pfiz­er vac­cines for the five to 11 age group,

Row­ley said ex­plo­ration has tak­en place via the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at and CARPHA, as well as through bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions.

Row­ley signed the Cari­com agree­ment on T&T’s be­half a few weeks ago. And we look for­ward to the re­ceipt of vac­cines for our 5 to 11-year-old pop­u­la­tion,” he said.

How­ev­er, Row­ley said T&T’s vac­ci­na­tion pace has been slow. T&T be­gan its main vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve in April 2021.

He said T&T achieved the feat of ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ing 50 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion (700,000 per­sons) on Feb­ru­ary 19, 2022– 50 per cent of the es­ti­mat­ed 1.4 mil­lion in­hab­i­tants have ei­ther re­ceived two dos­es of a two-dose vac­cine or one dose of a one-dose vac­cine.

He said, “By late 2021, we were see­ing a slow up­take of vac­cines. To date, we con­tin­ue to see a very slow up­take in the num­ber of vac­ci­na­tions re­ceived on a dai­ly ba­sis across both is­lands. De­spite our best ef­forts to en­sure the avail­abil­i­ty of and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to safe and ef­fec­tive WHO-ap­proved vac­cines, in­clud­ing em­ploy­ing var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tions strate­gies, our progress in the con­tin­u­a­tion of vac­ci­nat­ing the un­vac­ci­nat­ed in our pop­u­la­tion has been slow. “This week, we were forced to de­stroy over quar­ter of a mil­lion dos­es of Pfiz­er vac­cines which ex­pired. Com­pare this to the days in ear­ly 2021, when the un­avail­able but high­ly de­sir­able ‘gold stan­dard’ Pfiz­er vac­cine was re­gard­ed as the sav­iour to take us out of the killing clutch­es of the dead­ly virus that was threat­en­ing to over­whelm us.

“This is af­ter the vac­ci­na­tion lev­el has vir­tu­al­ly stalled at 50 per­cent and as of this week 3,642 of our cit­i­zens have lost their lives to COVID-19.”

He added, “On av­er­age, the dai­ly vac­ci­na­tion rate in­creas­es by 0.1 per cent, which is well be­low what we hoped for in the face of this con­tin­u­ing threat. How­ev­er, we con­tin­ue to make vac­cines avail­able and to en­cour­age peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed and es­pe­cial­ly to get the boost­er to strength­en and pro­long ef­fec­tive lev­els of im­mu­ni­ty.”

Row­ley said pop­u­la­tion im­mu­ni­ty is gen­er­at­ed via two prin­ci­pal path­ways: vac­cine-in­duced im­mu­ni­ty and nat­u­ral­ly-ac­quired im­mu­ni­ty fol­low­ing in­fec­tion.

In­fec­tions con­tin­ued to rise over the last four month. As of March 1, T&T stands at a to­tal of 128,145 con­firmed cas­es.

He said, “It can be ex­pect­ed, based on our test­ing strate­gies (where­by symp­to­matic per­sons are test­ed pre­dom­i­nant­ly aside from test­ing those for trav­el-re­lat­ed pur­pos­es or oth­er spe­cial groups) that we can an­tic­i­pate that a larg­er pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion would have been in­fect­ed, than con­firmed.

“If one were to as­sume, for ex­am­ple, that for every one con­firmed in­fect­ed per­son, three oth­er per­sons would al­so be in­fect­ed but un­con­firmed, we can ex­trap­o­late that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion has been in­fect­ed with COVID-19.”