Derek Achong

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has re­ject­ed con­cerns raised by a group of med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, so­cial ac­tivists and re­li­gious lead­ers over his min­istry’s on­go­ing move to ad­min­is­ter COVID-19 vac­cines to chil­dren ages 5 to 11. 

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions over a lengthy “joint pub­lic de­c­la­ra­tion” is­sued by the group re­fer­ring to it­self as “Re­spon­si­ble and In­formed Par­ents” on Sat­ur­day, Deyals­ingh yes­ter­day not­ed that the vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve was vol­un­tary and par­ents had the sole dis­cre­tion to de­cide on whether to con­sent to have their child vac­ci­nat­ed with the pae­di­atric Pfiz­er COVID-19 vac­cine. 

“The vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign is vol­un­tary, they are to­tal­ly mis­guid­ed,” Deyals­ingh said, as he not­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had al­ready an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment had no in­ten­tion to make vac­ci­na­tion, es­pe­cial­ly for chil­dren, manda­to­ry. 

He not­ed that since the pro­gramme was in­tro­duced a week and a half ago, on­ly ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,000 chil­dren have been vac­ci­nat­ed thus far. 

“So they (par­ents) are mak­ing their choic­es, which we re­spect,” he said, as he de­scribed some of the con­cerns raised as “red her­rings.”

Re­spond­ing to calls for the pro­gramme to be stopped pend­ing fur­ther con­sul­ta­tions, Deyals­ingh said he was sat­is­fied with pre­vi­ous con­sul­ta­tions with ma­jor lo­cal health­care as­so­ci­a­tions, adding that the vac­cine was al­so ap­proved by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) and the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO). 

“We have al­ready en­gaged the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion and the Pae­di­atric So­ci­ety, who have en­dorsed the vac­cine, so I don’t know what oth­er en­gage­ment we need to have,” Deyals­ingh said. 

He al­so not­ed that the vac­cine was ad­min­is­tered to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 mil­lion chil­dren in the Unit­ed States with­out any ma­jor is­sues. 

The cur­rent pro­gramme for the age group was fa­cil­i­tat­ed through the do­na­tion of 40,000 pae­di­atric vac­cines by the gov­ern­ment of Spain in late March. 

The lo­cal group be­gan their op­po­si­tion to the pro­gramme in a let­ter to the ed­i­tor is­sued last week and fol­lowed up with a lengthy state­ment on Sat­ur­day. 

The clin­i­cians and med­ical aca­d­e­mics who were sig­na­to­ries to the state­ment were Dr David Bratt, Dr Wayne Labastide, Dr Sharon Lack­an, Dr Fer­oze Omardeen, Dr Nilesh Ram­nar­ine, Dr Ra­jiv Seereer­am, Dr John­ny Siu Chong and Dr David Stri­siv­er. 

The union and hu­man rights ac­tivists were Michael Anisette, Christo­pher Joe­field, Umar Ab­dul­lah, Gary Aboud, Ri­car­do Goolcha­ran, Ed­ward Mood­ie, Ravi Ramdeen and Vicky Ram­per­sad. 

Robert Amar, Sher­if­fa Ali-Bal­lan­tine, Cathal Healy-Singh, Clarence Men­doza, Deb­o­rah Mail­lard and Ri­ad Ram­saran rep­re­sent­ed civ­il so­ci­ety, while Dr Vic­tor Gill, Pas­tor Lennox Grant and Dr Michael Mc­Dow­ell were the re­li­gious lead­ers who signed. 

“We, the un­der­signed, recog­nise that the Min­istry of Health is in breach of med­ical ethics by ex­pos­ing our chil­dren to the in­de­ter­mi­nate health risks from an emer­gency use phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal with­out de­clar­ing such risks or as­sum­ing li­a­bil­i­ty for dam­ages,” the group said. 

In the state­ment, the group point­ed to the con­di­tions the US Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion (FDA) im­posed when it grant­ed Emer­gency Use Au­tho­ri­sa­tion (EUA) for the Pfiz­er mR­NA vac­cine. 

The group stat­ed that the FDA man­dat­ed that par­ents are in­formed that the vac­cine pos­es a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant risk of my­ocardi­tis/peri­cardi­tis (heart in­flam­ma­tion) in young males 5 to 17 years of age. 

“The FDA man­dates that doc­tors in­form par­ents that they have the right to refuse, with­out any fear of re­proach, pun­ish­ment or dis­crim­i­na­tion,” the group said. 

The group al­so not­ed that the high­ly trans­mis­si­ble Omi­cron vari­ant of COVID-19 out­com­petes oth­er more vir­u­lent strains such as the Delta and Gam­ma strains.

“Omi­cron fa­tal­i­ties are ex­ceed­ing­ly rare in young adults, ado­les­cents and chil­dren, who are ex­pect­ed to uni­ver­sal­ly re­cov­er with­out vac­ci­na­tion,” the group said. 

The group sug­gest­ed sev­en con­di­tions which it claimed should be im­ple­ment­ed by the min­istry be­fore the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme con­tin­ues. 

First­ly, the group claimed that the min­istry should in­form the pub­lic that fa­tal­i­ties and se­ri­ous com­pli­ca­tions due to the Omi­cron vari­ant are min­i­mal and that the vac­cine was be­ing ad­min­is­tered un­der a EUA, as a pae­di­atric safe­ty tri­al is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in June 2024. They al­so called on the min­istry to in­form par­ents of the risk of com­pli­ca­tions be­fore seek­ing their con­sent.

“The min­istry ceas­es all forms of vac­cine co­er­cion and rep­ri­mands any pub­lic fig­ures or clin­i­cians who ex­ag­ger­ate the threat of Omi­cron to dri­ve vac­cine up­take,” it said. 

It claimed that par­ents should al­so be in­formed that mR­NA vac­cines are nov­el biotech­nolo­gies with lim­it­ed clin­i­cal test­ing and no ap­proval for use in hu­mans be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

The group al­so called on the min­istry to es­tab­lish a strin­gent, pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble vac­cine ad­verse event re­port­ing sys­tem and a vac­cine in­jury com­pen­sa­tion fund, which would take li­a­bil­i­ty for chil­dren who ex­pe­ri­ence se­ri­ous ad­verse side ef­fects af­ter tak­ing the vac­cine.