Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh

am­bi­ka.ja­gas­sars­ingh@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says thou­sands of peo­ple are elect­ing to take the in­fluen­za jab this year. De­spite this, there have been 5 fa­tal­i­ties record­ed.

Deyals­ingh made the com­ment at an in­fluen­za vac­cine out­reach at the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

“We start­ed our in­fluen­za dri­ve about three weeks ago and to date, we have de­liv­ered 15,913 dos­es, in com­par­i­son to last year’s sea­son where we de­liv­ered 26,000 dos­es. We have de­liv­ered more than 50% of last year’s to­tal in on­ly three weeks, as op­posed to the whole six-month sea­son for last year,” Deyals­ingh said.

Oc­to­ber to May is con­sid­ered to be in­fluen­za sea­son in the north­ern hemi­sphere.

Deyals­ingh said these high­er-than-usu­al num­bers might be a good sign, since they in­di­cate that the pop­u­la­tion is “not vac­ci­na­tion weary.”

De­spite this, he said the vac­ci­na­tion rate in vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions is not at a lev­el where it should be.

“One of the crit­i­cal pop­u­la­tions we are try­ing to tar­get is those with chron­ic dis­eases ... to date, we have vac­ci­nat­ed 7,149 per­sons with chron­ic dis­eases, which isn’t bad. How­ev­er, one of the pop­u­la­tions that every year we have chal­lenges with is our preg­nant pop­u­la­tion and this year we have on­ly done 136 preg­nant women.”

Deyals­ingh said these women “fear that the vac­cine will harm them, their un­born child and noth­ing is fur­ther from the truth.”

Di­rec­tor of Health at the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCWRHA), Dr An­tho­ny Parkin­son, sup­port­ed the min­is­ter’s state­ments, urg­ing the pop­u­la­tion, es­pe­cial­ly those who are more sus­cep­ti­ble to dis­eases, to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

He said if moth­ers take the vac­cine and have the an­ti­bod­ies in their sys­tems, “it will give the ba­by a fight­ing chance” against the dis­ease.

Dr Parkin­son al­so em­pha­sised that in­fluen­za “comes in when you are weak­ened in your im­mu­ni­ty, it al­so, what it does, at­tacks your lungs...caus­es a pneu­mo­nia, once you get a pneu­mo­nia and your lungs be­come wa­ter-logged then you have to go to the ICU, and we have to put you on the ven­ti­la­tor...in­fluen­za goes straight to your lungs and caus­es pneu­mo­nia in peo­ple who are sus­cep­ti­ble.”

In light of this, he once again told cit­i­zens, “When you can, go to your near­est health cen­tre...it’s not go­ing to stop you from get­ting the cold, but it may make the symp­toms go away faster.”

Deyals­ingh al­so ad­dressed COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tions.

“The COVID-19 vac­cine rate has dropped tremen­dous­ly, we are now at 51.3 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, months ago it was 51.1.”

Re­gard­ing the fu­ture of the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem, he said: “We have start­ed to de-em­pha­sise the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem since May when we de-cant­ed the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal. Then around June, we de­cant­ed the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal. So, by at­tri­tion, be­cause our num­bers are very low now, we ex­pect by the end of the year the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem as you know it, may no longer be there be­cause we have been mov­ing to what we call a hy­brid sys­tem and we an­nounced pub­licly some months ago that the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal will be the ac­tu­al first hy­brid sys­tem.”