SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Al­though the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) does not sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s vac­cine man­date for pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees, they are urg­ing the pop­u­la­tion to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

Speak­ing dur­ing a UNC me­dia brief­ing on Sun­day morn­ing, for­mer UNC Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Dr Tim Gopeesingh con­demned the Gov­ern­ment for it’s COVID-19 re­sponse, say­ing the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) have failed.

Gopeesingh said the vac­cine man­date goes against the Con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“It is against the hu­man rights of the cit­i­zens, which is un­der Sec­tions Four and Five of the Con­sti­tu­tion. This to­tal­i­tar­i­an­ism, the dic­ta­to­r­i­al at­ti­tude of the Gov­ern­ment will not be ac­cept­ed. The pop­u­la­tion has lost con­fi­dence in the Gov­ern­ment,” he said.

“It was the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress which sup­port­ed the Gov­ern­ment at that time in ask­ing the cit­i­zens to take the Sinopharm vac­cine be­cause if that was the on­ly one avail­able at that time, they should have tak­en it. And we still main­tain that all cit­i­zens should avail them­selves of what­ev­er vac­cine is avail­able,” Goopeesingh said.

Gopeesingh, who has been a doc­tor for 45 years, and spe­cialis­es in gy­nae­col­o­gy and gy­nae-can­cer, was in­tro­duced by his for­mer col­league Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts as the UNC’s ex­pert to dis­sect the Gov­ern­ment’s COVID-19 re­sponse.

On Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that come mid-Jan­u­ary, the Gov­ern­ment would im­ple­ment a vac­cine man­date for pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees.

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter­ward, Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar crit­i­cised this move, say­ing cit­i­zens should not be forced to take the COVID-19 vac­cines.

There are four brands of COVID-19 vac­cines avail­able in Trinidad- Sinopharm, As­trazeneca, Ph­fiz­er and John­son and John­son. COVID-19 vac­cines do not pre­vent the spread of the virus but of­fers pro­tec­tion to those who are in­oc­u­lat­ed against se­ri­ous dis­ease and death, in most cas­es.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing, Roberts said the par­ty stands be­hind Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ment, adding “No to the vac­cine man­date! No to forced vac­ci­na­tion!”

At Roberts’ urg­ing, Gopeesingh out­lined what he termed the ide­al con­di­tions for ICU care for COVID-19 pa­tients- in­clud­ing the doc­tor to pa­tient ra­tio. He said there were too few doc­tors to treat COVID-19 pa­tients.

He slammed the Gov­ern­ment, say­ing poor de­ci­sion mak­ing has left the par­al­lel health care sys­tem with­out ex­pe­ri­enced med­ical con­sul­tants. Gopeesingh said ju­nior doc­tors have been tasked with car­ing for crit­i­cal­ly ill COVID-19 pa­tients.

“I have de­scribed it as Row­ley has gone across this coun­try and has de­clared war on this coun­try in­stead of en­sur­ing that the cit­i­zens are tak­en care off, he has de­clared war on the cit­i­zens by his mis­man­age­ment and his in­com­pe­tence. And he has cre­at­ed killing fields in the ICU and the Emer­gency De­part­ment and the am­bu­lances and at home- peo­ple are dy­ing all over,” Gopeesingh said.

He said cit­i­zens were be­ing “fooled” dur­ing the Min­istry of Health’s COVID-19 me­dia brief­in­gs, while T&T has the worst in­fec­tion and death rates from the virus world­wide.

“One telling you about a colour of a chart, the next telling you about how many beds are filled, the next one fol­low­ing just dic­tat­ing the WHO di­rec­tions and the next one do­ing ab­solute­ly noth­ing,” he said.