Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

In a land­mark move in the coun­try’s fight against the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, 100 front­line health­care work­ers were the first to be in­oc­u­lat­ed as the Min­istry of Health be­gan its first phase of vac­ci­na­tions at the Cou­va Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day.

They re­ceived their first of two dos­es of the Ox­ford-As­traZeneca vac­cine.

The first per­son to re­ceive a dose was Keisha Pre­vatt-Gomez, a nurse who treats COVID-19 pa­tients at the In­fec­tious Dis­ease Con­trol de­part­ment at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal.

She ad­mit­ted she had her reser­va­tions about get­ting the jab at first but af­ter do­ing her re­search, she was con­vinced. 

“I did do the re­search. I looked at the sci­ence be­hind the vac­cine and I am con­fi­dent that it’s go­ing to work and that I am mak­ing the right de­ci­sion for my­self and the wider pop­u­la­tion,” she said short­ly af­ter re­ceiv­ing it.

She was fol­lowed by Dr Don Mar­tin, Med­ical Chief of Staff at the Cou­va Med­ical and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty who said he was proud to be one of the “pi­o­neers who stepped for­ward to take this vac­cine.”

“I think it’s the most piv­otal step in our fight against the scourge of COVID-19. If we want to get to that point of nor­mal­cy where we can in­ter­act with each oth­er, we must be able to vac­ci­nate as much per­sons as pos­si­ble,” he said.

Dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh pro­claimed how proud he was of the health­care work­ers for com­ing for­ward to be in­oc­u­lat­ed.

“I am so proud of our health­care work­ers. A hun­dred of them who have de­cid­ed that to­day is the day they are go­ing to lead this coun­try to take con­trol of the virus,” he said.

Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh poses for a picture with the first set of recipients of the COVID-19 vaccine during the NCRHA’s public vaccination programme of over100 health workers at the Couva Hospital, Uriah Butler Highway, yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

The min­is­ter said yes­ter­day’s ges­ture set an ex­am­ple for oth­er health­care work­ers and cit­i­zens, among whom the min­istry has not­ed an aver­sion to re­ceiv­ing the jab.

“By this 100-per­sons show­ing to­day, you are telling the coun­try that you be­lieve in the sci­ence...that you don’t be­lieve in myths and su­per­sti­tion and old wives tales.”

The min­istry has since un­der­gone cam­paigns to ed­u­cate and pro­mote the vac­cine, of­ten ded­i­cat­ing large por­tions of their tri-week­ly press brief­in­gs to the en­deav­our. 

The launch of the first phase of vac­ci­na­tions came less than 24 hours af­ter the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) gave emer­gency use au­tho­ri­sa­tion to two ver­sions of the Ox­ford-As­traZeneca vac­cine on Mon­day; one pro­duced by SKBio in the Re­pub­lic of Ko­rea and the oth­er which is pro­duced by the Serum In­sti­tute of In­dia. 

This ap­proval is ex­act­ly what the Min­istry of Health has been wait­ing on be­fore ad­min­is­ter­ing the vac­cine. Through­out the pan­dem­ic of­fi­cials such as the Min­is­ter of Health and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer main­tained that they would on­ly em­ploy a vac­cine which has re­ceived the WHO’s ap­proval—a point Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh re­it­er­at­ed yes­ter­day.

The front­line work­ers are be­ing in­oc­u­lat­ed from a batch of 2,000 dos­es of the Ox­ford-As­traZeneca vac­cine the coun­try got as a gift from Bar­ba­dos last week. Bar­ba­dos re­ceived the vac­cines from In­dia. 

The WHO’S ap­proval now trig­gers the dis­tri­b­u­tion of vac­cine dos­es through the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty of which T&T has al­ready bought in­to through a US$1.5 mil­lion down­pay­ment.

The coun­try is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive be­tween 100,000 to 120,000 dos­es of the Ox­ford-As­traZeneca vac­cine with­in the next two weeks from the fa­cil­i­ty. 

These dos­es would be a part of the coun­try’s first phase of vac­ci­na­tions which would go to health­care work­ers, the el­der­ly and es­sen­tial work­ers.

Al­though the Min­istry of Health is ex­plor­ing oth­er av­enues of procur­ing vac­cines, Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh said it is un­like­ly they would be suc­cess­ful be­fore the batch is re­ceived from CO­V­AX.