No vac­cines from the Co­v­ax fa­cil­i­ty were stolen from the stor­age at the Cou­va Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh yes­ter­day re­fut­ed claims by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark. Mark and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) stayed away from Par­lia­ment again yes­ter­day and once again called a me­dia con­fer­ence to in­sist that the par­lia­men­tary cham­ber be sani­tised and that those sit­ting near and in the com­pa­ny of the Prime Min­is­ter be test­ed for COVID-19.

Mark, at the me­dia con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader in Port-of-Spain, said that some of the 33,600 vac­cines bought from the Co­v­ax fa­cil­i­ty were stolen from stor­age at the Cou­va Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

Mark had no ev­i­dence of the claim but said that it was in­for­ma­tion passed on to him. He urged re­porters to in­ves­ti­gate.

“We learned to­day, from a source at the Cou­va Med­ical Cen­tre that vac­cines stored at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal, re­frig­er­at­ed, vac­cines were stolen,” he said.

But Deyals­ingh said that that was not true. He quot­ed the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, Dr Bri­an Ar­mour as say­ing that “there is ab­solute­ly no truth to the claim of miss­ing COVID-19 vac­cines”.

“The al­le­ga­tion was brought to my at­ten­tion yes­ter­day (Mon­day) by the staff of the fa­cil­i­ty, Sub­se­quent in­ves­ti­ga­tions were con­duct­ed and proved that was false,” Ar­mour said in the me­dia re­lease.

The vac­cines ar­rived in the coun­try on March 30.

Mark, in ex­plain­ing the de­ci­sion of Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors to stay away yes­ter­day, said that every­one who was in close con­tact with the Prime Min­is­ter must take the test and is call­ing for the space to be sani­tised.

Mark said that if the Op­po­si­tion did not boy­cott Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, the coun­try would not have known that con­tact trac­ing on­ly need­ed to be done for the two days pri­or to the on­set of symp­toms.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day, epi­demi­ol­o­gist Dr Av­ery Hinds said that ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion lat­est up­date, on­ly that two-day win­dow need­ed to be re­traced to de­ter­mine points of con­tact.

“We would nev­er have known,” Mark said.

“All long we were told that once you test pos­i­tive for COVID-19, con­tact trac­ing must go up to 14 days, all of the peo­ple you have been in con­tact with the last 14 days must go in­to quar­an­tine and iso­lat­ed. This is what the pop­u­la­tion was told,” he said.

“All of a sud­den the Prime Min­is­ter con­tracts COVID-19 and the goal post shifts,” he said.

He likened Row­ley to a de­posed African self-crowned em­per­or, Jean Bedél Bokas­sa.

“One law for him­self and his min­is­ters and then an­oth­er law for us, his sub­jects,” he said.

Mark said that he want­ed Row­ley to get well quick­ly be­cause he had “re­al bat­tles” to face with the UNC.

Mark said that the UNC was sup­posed to be at the Sen­ate, but be­cause of the “dis­re­spect, con­tempt and con­tu­me­ly” shown to the of­fi­cial UNC, they had to call a me­dia con­fer­ence in­stead of at­tend­ing.

Mark said that since last Wednes­day the UNC wrote to House Speak­er Brigid An­nisette-George to en­sure that all nec­es­sary steps were tak­en to safe­guard the wel­fare and safe­ty of the peo­ple who worked at par­lia­ment and the MP’s.

“To­day (Tues­day), al­most six days lat­er, not a re­sponse, not a cour­tesy even of an ac­knowl­edge­ment,” Mark said.

He said it was ev­i­dence of the “PNM-style dic­ta­tor­ship”.

“But we will have none of it, we will not al­low the PNM to dis­re­spect the UNC,” he said.

He cit­ed a news­pa­per ed­i­to­r­i­al that sup­port­ed the UNC’s par­lia­men­tary boy­cott and said he sent that to Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan and asked him to take the nec­es­sary steps to have the Par­lia­ment sani­tised.

“Be­cause we don’t know. This thing is evolv­ing,” Mark said.

“He re­spond­ed by a phone call say­ing there was no need for that, no need for sani­ti­sa­tion,” he said.

Mark said that Khan at­tend­ed an en­er­gy event with Row­ley and could al­so be in­fect­ed.