An­na-Lisa Paul

Two days af­ter the Strate­gic Ad­vi­so­ry Group of Ex­perts (SAGE) rec­om­mend­ed that peo­ple with weak im­mune sys­tems should re­ceive an ad­di­tion­al shot of an ap­proved COVID-19 vac­cine, the Min­istry of Health (MoH) is ex­pect­ed to meet next week to dis­cuss these lat­est de­vel­op­ments which could see the na­tion­al vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy be­ing re­vised.

Mak­ing this dis­clo­sure as he re­spond­ed to ques­tions dur­ing the vir­tu­al me­dia brief­ing host­ed by the min­istry yes­ter­day, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram con­firmed, “As it re­lates to Sinopharm and Sino­vac, they are ask­ing for what is con­sid­ered a third dose but is not con­sid­ered a boost­er, rather it is con­sid­ered a pri­ma­ry dose. They are rec­om­mend­ing that be giv­en to per­sons over the age of 60.”

In ad­di­tion, Paras­ram said rec­om­men­da­tions has al­so been made for a third dose of a COVID-19 vac­cine to be ad­min­is­tered to per­sons who are im­muno-com­pro­mised such as those suf­fer­ing with se­vere di­a­betes, re­nal fail­ure, can­cer, and oth­er sim­i­lar kinds of con­di­tions which will be de­fined by SAGE lat­er on.

He said, “T&T will wait on the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion to put out an of­fi­cial re­lease,” be­fore meet­ing next to con­sid­er the rec­om­men­da­tions and how it can be in­clud­ed in the na­tion­al pol­i­cy – giv­en the vac­cine stock avail­able, eq­ui­ty of ac­cess and the pop­u­la­tion per­cent­age so far vac­ci­nat­ed.