Even as the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) con­tin­ues to in­ves­ti­gate if re­cent blood clot­ting in­ci­dents in pa­tients from cer­tain coun­tries in the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) was a di­rect cause of the As­traZeneca vac­cine, lo­cal health of­fi­cials have as­sured T&T can go ahead with rolling out this vac­cine to its pop­u­la­tion.

Com­ment­ing on con­cerns af­ter few coun­tries in the EU sus­pend­ed the ad­min­is­tra­tion of this par­tic­u­lar vac­cine, epi­demi­ol­o­gist Dr Av­ery Hinds and Med­ical Chief of Staff at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex Dr Joanne Paul said there were still strong rec­om­men­da­tions from ex­perts re­lat­ing to the pro­tec­tion that this vac­cine can pro­vide.

Speak­ing dur­ing the Min­istry of Health’s brief­ing on Sat­ur­day, Paul said close to 50 mil­lion peo­ple in the world had al­ready re­ceived the As­traZeneca vac­cine with no is­sues.

Hinds, said, mean­while an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way and the WHO is cur­rent­ly eval­u­at­ing the sit­u­a­tion. He said un­til the eval­u­a­tion is com­plete and in­di­cates oth­er­wise, the vac­cine is still safe to ad­min­is­ter and T&T will con­tin­ue its vac­cine roll-out plan as sched­uled.

A re­lease from the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) lat­er said the pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure by some EU coun­tries to sus­pend their As­traZeneca vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign as a re­sult of re­ports of rare blood co­ag­u­la­tion dis­or­ders in peo­ple who had re­ceived the vac­cine, had been “done as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure while a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion is con­duct­ed in­to the re­ports.”

The re­lease stat­ed, “At present, it can­not be de­ter­mined whether there is a link be­tween the vac­cine and the dis­or­ders.”

CARPHA ad­vised that ad­verse re­ac­tions that hap­pen fol­low­ing im­mu­ni­sa­tion with any vac­cine need to be ful­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed to rule out var­i­ous fac­tors such as con­comi­tant ill­ness­es, pro­gres­sion of a dis­ease, and batch as­sess­ment be­fore a fi­nal de­ci­sion is made by the health au­thor­i­ties.

They added, “It must be not­ed that the vac­cine be­ing used in the Caribbean is not the same ver­sion or batch as the one in Eu­rope.”

The WHO’s Glob­al Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Vac­cine Safe­ty (GACVS) sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly re­views any vac­cine safe­ty sig­nals and con­cerns re­lat­ed to COVID-19 vac­cine safe­ty. This com­mit­tee is said to be care­ful­ly as­sess­ing the cur­rent re­ports on the As­traZeneca vac­cine.

Dr Joanne Paul

CARPHA said, “As soon as WHO has gained a full un­der­stand­ing of these events, the find­ings and any changes to cur­rent rec­om­men­da­tions will be im­me­di­ate­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al pub­lic health part­ners which in­cludes CARPHA.”

The WHO said vac­ci­na­tion against COVID-19 will not re­duce deaths from oth­er caus­es. As of March 9, over 268 mil­lion dos­es of COVID-19 vac­cines had been ad­min­is­tered since the start of the pan­dem­ic based on da­ta re­port­ed to WHO by na­tion­al gov­ern­ments.

No deaths have been caused by COVID-19 vac­cines to date.

The re­lease in­clud­ed a fur­ther as­sur­ance to, “Mem­ber States that CARPHA’s Caribbean Reg­u­la­to­ry Sys­tem (CRS) ap­plies its re­liance pro­ce­dure to ver­i­fy vac­cines with emer­gency use au­tho­ri­sa­tion grant­ed by strin­gent reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ties of ref­er­ence.”

CARPHA is en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple who have been vac­ci­nat­ed to re­port ad­verse events that oc­cur af­ter vac­ci­na­tion to lo­cal health au­thor­i­ties.

Re­gard­ing the ap­pear­ance of vari­ants, CARPHA said this was part of the nor­mal cy­cle of vi­ral in­fec­tion and repli­ca­tion and should not be con­sid­ered an un­usu­al process.

Be­cause the vari­ants ap­pear more fre­quent­ly as more sub­jects be­come in­fect­ed, peo­ple have been urged to main­tain mea­sures that pre­vent the oc­cur­rence of new in­fec­tions such as the use of face masks, wash­ing hands, so­cial dis­tanc­ing, and avoid­ing crowds.

CARPHA reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal sup­port and ad­vice and con­tin­ues to con­duct tests for sus­pect­ed COVID-19 cas­es for all CARPHA Mem­ber States (CMS) rou­tine­ly as re­quest­ed.

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, CARPHA start­ed con­duct­ing whole genome se­quenc­ing for Cari­com coun­tries in De­cem­ber 2020. So far, CARPHA has de­tect­ed cas­es of the UK vari­ant in sev­er­al mem­ber states. No cas­es of the Brazil or South Africa vari­ant have been de­tect­ed.