Carisa Lee

Carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

Re­porter

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is urg­ing cit­i­zens to get vac­ci­nat­ed for in­fluen­za (flu) ahead of the Car­ni­val sea­son, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter eight deaths were record­ed last year.

“The virus­es cir­cu­lat­ing in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope dur­ing the win­ter sea­son will even­tu­al­ly find them­selves down from Trinidad and To­ba­go as our vis­i­tors, friends, and fam­i­ly come down for the Car­ni­val sea­son,” he ex­plained.

Dur­ing the launch of the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty’s (NWRHA) sec­ond In­fluen­za Vac­ci­na­tion Dri­ve for 2025 at Port of Spain City Hall on Mon­day, Deyals­ingh said this ini­tia­tive is aimed at pro­mot­ing pub­lic health and safe­ty ahead of Car­ni­val 2025, en­sur­ing that cit­i­zens re­main pro­tect­ed dur­ing the sea­son.

“It is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant for the el­der­ly to get vac­ci­nat­ed, chil­dren, those with chron­ic dis­eases like who on dial­y­sis, can­cer pa­tients, di­a­bet­ic pa­tients those are the pop­u­la­tions we are ex­treme­ly con­cerned about,” he said.

The Min­is­ter ex­plained that it takes at least two weeks for the vac­cine to be ef­fec­tive. He said to date they have vac­ci­nat­ed 27,717 peo­ple but said they were aim­ing for at least 50,000 vac­ci­nat­ed. Two weeks be­fore Car­ni­val is Feb­ru­ary 14.

“You can’t take the vac­cine to­day and ex­pect to get im­mune from to­mor­row, it takes 14 days for your body to rec­og­nize what is go­ing on and mount an ef­fec­tive re­sponse,” he said.

Deyals­ingh said it is pos­si­ble for a vac­ci­nat­ed per­son to con­tract the com­mon cold but the shot is what keeps them out of the in­ten­sive care unit (ICU).

He said this was the last op­por­tu­ni­ty for cit­i­zens to vis­it a Mass Vac­ci­na­tion Site in three high­ly dense ar­eas; City Hall and the Care­nage and Diego Mar­tin Health Cen­tres.

“Typ­i­cal­ly un­der North West we will go to the pad­dock but you need to have trans­port, you need to have a car. What we are do­ing this time...we have bro­ken them out in­to three more com­mu­ni­ty-type cen­tres,” he ex­plained.

He said oth­er Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) will have their vac­ci­na­tion sites.