The Pae­di­atric So­ci­ety of T&T has reem­pha­sised its en­dorse­ment of the Pfiz­er COVID-19 vac­cines for chil­dren ages five to 11, re­fer­ring to it as a “game chang­er” against the pan­dem­ic.

“The PSTT en­cour­ages any and all mea­sures which would re­turn the chil­dren of Trinidad and To­ba­go to a sense of safe­ty and nor­mal­cy. We al­so en­cour­age the ap­pro­pri­ate and prop­er wear­ing of masks, hand hy­giene, and phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing. The PSTT sup­ports the use of WHO ap­proved COVID vac­cines for chil­dren ages five to 11 years and chil­dren ages 12 to 18 years,” it said in a re­lease on Fri­day.

The pae­di­atric so­ci­ety un­der­scored the role vac­cines con­tin­ue to play in the fight against the pan­dem­ic, es­pe­cial­ly as its mem­bers who work in hos­pi­tals “have had to treat with se­ri­ous, some­times nov­el acute and post COVID-19 com­pli­ca­tions amongst chil­dren un­der their care.”

“It is un­de­ni­able that vac­ci­na­tion has con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to re­duc­ing trans­mis­sion, deaths, se­vere ill­ness, and hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion due to COVID-19 in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. The PSTT would like to re­mind all that no vac­cine is 100 per cent pro­tec­tive but rather lends pro­tec­tion against se­ri­ous and sys­temic dis­ease, re­duc­ing risks of hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion, in­ten­sive care re­quire­ments and death. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, vac­cines usu­al­ly re­quire boost­er dos­es at var­i­ous in­ter­vals in or­der to achieve their max­i­mal ef­fi­ca­cy. The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­proved COVID-19 vac­cines are no dif­fer­ent in this re­gard,” it said.

It al­so said the vac­cine has been en­dorsed and ap­proved by in­ter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies which are al­so mon­i­tor­ing its safe­ty.

“Vac­cine reg­u­la­tors of the WHO, the joint In­ter­na­tion­al Coali­tion of Med­i­cines Reg­u­la­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties (ICM­RA) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er glob­al reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ties have re­viewed the sci­en­tif­ic da­ta pre-emer­gency use ap­proval (EUA) and con­tin­ue to re­view re­al time safe­ty da­ta of the 11 bil­lion dos­es of COVID-19 vac­cines ad­min­is­tered glob­al­ly as of March 2022. These agen­cies con­tin­ue to sup­port vac­ci­na­tion with the mR­NA vac­cines for above men­tioned age groups,” it said.

“The PSTT re­minds all par­ents and guardians that COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion is not manda­to­ry and en­cour­ages all to seek rep­utable sources of in­for­ma­tion to make in­formed de­ci­sions re­gard­ing their charges.”

On Thurs­day, the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion al­so gave its en­dorse­ment of the vac­cine.

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