The Min­istry of Health has tak­en re­ceipt of the first of two ship­ments of “mPox” (Mon­key­pox) vac­cines for use in Trinidad and To­ba­go, as of Tues­day, De­cem­ber 13.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Min­istry, the 1,400 dos­es of the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) ap­proved “mpox” vac­cines will be giv­en to tar­get­ed groups of peo­ple, and as such, there will not be a na­tion­al mass vac­ci­na­tion ef­fort.

“The Na­tion­al Im­mu­niza­tion Tech­ni­cal Ad­vi­so­ry Group (NITAG), up­on re­view of these [WHO] in­ter­im guide­lines, has rec­om­mend­ed that these vac­cines will be ad­min­is­tered to in­di­vid­u­als who are close con­tacts of con­firmed pos­i­tive cas­es on­ly; to in­di­vid­u­als with­in the above cat­e­go­ry who are eigh­teen (18) years and old­er, but NOT preg­nant and/or breast­feed­ing; and as a post ex­po­sure pre­ven­ta­tive vac­ci­na­tion (PEPV) pro­gramme,” the Health Min­istry said.

“As such, on­ly in­di­vid­u­als who meet the above cri­te­ria would be el­i­gi­ble and a mass vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign would not be utilised at this time,” the Min­istry ex­plains.

It added: “Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cers of Health (CMOHs) will ac­tive­ly reach out to per­sons who are deemed con­tacts to of­fer vac­ci­na­tions to these in­di­vid­u­als.”

Re­mark­ing that it is fol­low­ing the WHO in­ter­im guide­lines—dat­ed No­vem­ber 16th, 2022—as it re­lates to use of these vac­cines, the Min­istry not­ed that in late No­vem­ber 2022, the WHO in­tro­duced the pre­ferred ter­mi­nol­o­gy “mpox” as a syn­onym for the mon­key­pox vac­cines.

A sec­ond ship­ment of 1,400 mpox vac­cines is sched­uled to ar­rive soon in T&T, the Min­istry as­sures. The vac­cines have been ac­quired via the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) vac­cine ac­qui­si­tion plat­form.

“This would amount to a to­tal of 2,800 dos­es of the two-dose “mpox” vac­cines avail­able lo­cal­ly,” the Health Min­istry said.

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De­tails on the WHO guide­lines for the “mpox” vac­cine can be found at…

https://www.who.int/pub­li­ca­tions-de­tail-redi­rect/WHO-MPX-Im­mu­niza­tion