DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Of the more than 700,000 cit­i­zens and res­i­dents who were vac­ci­nat­ed for COVID-19, on­ly 50 re­port­ed ex­pe­ri­enc­ing ad­verse side ef­fects. 

And none of those who re­port­ed such side ef­fects sub­se­quent­ly died as a re­sult of be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed.

These sta­tis­tics were pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of Health in re­sponse to a law­suit filed by so­cial ac­tivist Umar Ab­dul­lah, of the First Wave Move­ment. 

Last month, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad grant­ed Ab­dul­lah leave to pur­sue a law­suit against the min­istry over its fail­ure to pro­vide the sta­tis­tics in re­sponse to a re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) sub­mit­ted in Au­gust, last year. 

When the case came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Seep­er­sad yes­ter­day morn­ing, Ab­dul­lah’s lawyer Keron Ramkhal­wan in­di­cat­ed that most of the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion was sup­plied by the min­istry af­ter his client was giv­en per­mis­sion for the law­suit, last month. 

Re­fer­ring to the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to his client, Ramkhal­wan not­ed that the min­istry was un­able to re­veal the num­ber of peo­ple who re­cov­ered from the ad­verse ef­fects as it claimed that such in­for­ma­tion was not in its pos­ses­sion. 

He al­so point­ed out that the min­istry did not dis­close the re­ports on the ad­verse side ef­fects that were sent to vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers. 

“The min­is­ter said pub­licly the re­ports were be­ing sent on a week­ly ba­sis, how­ev­er the Min­istry of Health has in­di­cat­ed that it is not in pos­ses­sion of any of the re­ports,” Ramkhal­wan said.

He not­ed that it pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion on the spe­cif­ic side ef­fects ex­pe­ri­enced by those who sub­mit­ted re­ports to the min­istry through its on­line Events Sup­pos­ed­ly At­trib­ut­able to Vac­cines and Im­mu­ni­sa­tions (ESAVI) data­base. 

The min­istry not­ed that the in­for­ma­tion was sent to the Pan-Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) and by ex­ten­sion the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO). 

The spread­sheet on the in­di­vid­ual re­ports, which were redact­ed to ex­clude the pa­tients’ names and ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, showed that most of those af­fect­ed re­port­ed ex­pe­ri­enc­ing is­sues with their men­stru­al cy­cle af­ter be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed. 

“Pe­ri­od was de­layed, more painful cramps, ex­treme fa­tigue and heav­ier bleed­ing. All of these fac­tors are un­usu­al as I am on birth con­trol,” one fe­male pa­tient re­port­ed. 

“Af­ter my first dose my pe­ri­od cy­cle has been out of sync which is un­usu­al for me. For months of May and June I got my pe­ri­od twice. The prob­lem seemed to stop since I am get­ting my pe­ri­od once a month again. I usu­al­ly have my pe­ri­od for four days out of the month and now it can be up to five with light spot­ting,” an­oth­er pa­tient said. 

Some claimed that they suf­fered hy­per­ten­sion, seizures, blood clots and heart con­di­tions, while oth­ers re­port­ed suf­fer­ing headaches, body pain, fever and oth­er rel­a­tive­ly mi­nor con­di­tions which are recog­nised stan­dard side ef­fects iden­ti­fied by vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers. 

Al­though Jus­tice Seep­er­sad was forced to dis­pose of the case as most of the in­for­ma­tion sought was pro­vid­ed, he still sought to give his views on the pub­lic in­ter­est in it (the in­for­ma­tion) be­ing dis­closed. 

“This is im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion that should be shared with the pop­u­la­tion at large so peo­ple can make an in­formed de­ci­sion in re­la­tion to these vac­cines,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said. 

The judge al­so or­dered the min­istry to pay Ab­dul­lah $17,500 in le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the case. 

Ac­cord­ing to the last fort­night­ly COVID-19 up­date pub­lished by the min­istry on its web­site on May 2, last year, for the week pre­ced­ing it, 718,969 peo­ple (51.4 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion) were ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed with 174,836 be­ing ad­min­is­tered boost­ers. 

The vac­ci­na­tions used by the min­istry were Pfiz­er/BioN­Tech, Ox­ford/As­traZeneca, John­son and John­son, and Sinopharm. 

In a press re­lease is­sued on Jan­u­ary 18, the min­istry in­di­cat­ed that there had been an in­crease in hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions and deaths re­lat­ed to COVID-19 with six peo­ple suc­cumb­ing to the virus be­tween De­cem­ber 23, last year, and the date of the re­lease. 

“The min­istry notes the glob­al in­crease in Covid-19 cas­es with­in re­cent months. A sim­i­lar trend was not­ed in the Caribbean re­gion and lo­cal­ly, as a re­sult of in­creased move­ment of per­sons, which usu­al­ly oc­curs dur­ing the Christ­mas and the Car­ni­val sea­sons, among oth­er fac­tors,” it said.  

Ab­dul­lah was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Shali­ni Sankar.