An­na-Lisa Paul

As the pub­lic de­mand for the COVID-19 vac­cine con­tin­ued to swell yes­ter­day, health of­fi­cials had to in­crease the num­ber of phone lines via which ap­point­ments for the jabs are be­ing made at the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties.

In a bid to en­sure free and fair ac­cess, the Min­istry of Health is now look­ing at in­tro­duc­ing an on­line sys­tem that will im­prove ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and es­tab­lish a more ef­fi­cient ap­point­ment sys­tem with­in the next week.

As the lone Cab­i­net min­is­ter to re­ceive the As­traZeneca vac­cine on Tues­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh yes­ter­day de­scribed the grow­ing de­mand as a sign that the pub­lic has faith in the vac­cine and that “there is a high lev­el of vac­cine ac­cep­tance in T&T.”

Echo­ing this as she ap­peared along­side Deyals­ingh at the min­istry’s me­dia con­fer­ence, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards ad­mit­ted that fol­low­ing Tues­day’s roll-out, the long wait­ing times to make ap­point­ments were iden­ti­fied as a chal­lenge.

“Yes, we have re­ceived con­cerns from mem­bers of the pop­u­la­tion re­gard­ing the time tak­en to reach the hot­lines and al­so, re­gard­ing per­sons who would have gone in to make ap­point­ments them­selves,” Ab­dool-Richards said.

An ex­am­ple of the in­ter­est was record­ed at the Diego Mar­tin Health Cen­tre, where of­fi­cials record­ed 600 per­sons go­ing in for vac­ci­na­tions on Tues­day.

As­sur­ing that ad­di­tion­al process­es have since been put in place, Ab­dool-Richards said at the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA), they had in­creased phone lines from five, while at the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) it was in­creased from four to eight phone lines by yes­ter­day. Promis­ing to in­crease the staff op­er­at­ing these call lines from Fri­day, she said physi­cians and nurs­es will al­so be as­signed to re­spond to pub­lic queries.

Deyals­ingh said he did not ex­pe­ri­ence any of the usu­al side ef­fects, such as fever or pain, al­though oth­ers may have af­ter re­ceiv­ing the vac­cine. Health of­fi­cials al­so did not record any ad­verse re­ac­tions among the pop­u­lace who had been vac­ci­nat­ed, he added, not­ing parac­eta­mol had been pre­scribed for use by per­sons who ex­pe­ri­enced side ef­fects.

Deyals­ingh en­cour­aged more per­sons to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

“I am to­tal­ly glad to have been vac­ci­nat­ed. I per­son­al­ly trust the vac­cine and have faith in the vac­cine, oth­er­wise I would not have tak­en it,” he said.

He said over 2,000 vac­cines had been ad­min­is­tered to the pop­u­la­tion up to that time, adding they sur­passed the ini­tial 1,000-vac­cine pro­jec­tion for the first day of the roll-out pro­gramme on Tues­day and in­oc­u­lat­ed 1,153 per­sons across the five re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties.

Up to 6 pm on Tues­day, the NWRHA had record­ed the small­est num­ber of per­sons vac­ci­nat­ed at 80, while the SWRHA record­ed the largest num­ber at 471 per­sons be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed. The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty re­port­ed 280 per­sons; the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (ER­HA) 171 and the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) record­ed 151 per­sons ac­cess­ing the vac­cine.

Deyals­ingh con­firmed that the 40,000 vac­cines from the Serum In­sti­tute of In­dia were on sched­ule to ar­rive on Mon­day but could not an­swer ques­tions re­lat­ing to the ex­piry dates of this par­tic­u­lar batch of vac­cines. On the vac­cine ac­qui­si­tion via the African Med­ical Coun­cil, Deyals­ingh said they are still await­ing a sales con­tract from them.

In this first phase of vac­ci­na­tion, health care work­ers and per­sons over the age of 60 with and with­out co­mor­bidi­ties are be­ing tar­get­ed. Phase two will fo­cus on es­sen­tial work­ers such as law en­force­ment, teach­ers, coun­cil­lors and politi­cians.

BOX:

NCRHA Con­tact Num­bers:

Ch­agua­nas – 378-4374

St Joseph – 378-3707

Ari­ma – 380-1844

La Hor­quet­ta - 380 1704

NWRHA Con­tact Num­bers

285-8988 and 285-8993 Ext 1205/1231/1239