An­na-Lisa Paul

The long-await­ed COVID-19 vac­cine roll-out pro­gramme will be­gin across T&T to­day, with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh be­ing among those who will re­ceive the first jabs of the two-dose As­traZeneca vac­cine.

Row­ley is due to re­ceive his vac­cine in To­ba­go, while Deyals­ingh is sched­uled to re­ceive his around 3 pm at the St Joseph En­hanced Health Cen­tre in Champ Fleurs.

De­scrib­ing this as a his­toric day for T&T, Deyals­ingh yes­ter­day praised the staff of the Min­istry of Health for their ef­forts to en­sure the 21 des­ig­nat­ed vac­cine lo­ca­tions were ready to be­gin re­ceiv­ing and in­oc­u­lat­ing pa­tients to­day.

The vac­cine roll-out has been long an­tic­i­pat­ed by cit­i­zens ea­ger and anx­ious to get back to some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy, fol­low­ing the ar­rival of the COVID-19 virus to this coun­try on March 12, 2020.

The min­is­ter has pre­vi­ous­ly said the vac­cine is nec­es­sary to pre­serve lives and al­so in­crease the pop­u­la­tion’s im­mu­ni­ty to the dis­ease.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed last evening, Deyals­ingh said of­fi­cials had been, “plan­ning for months and this week­end has been non-stop work and we are ready, will­ing and able to start what is the most im­por­tant and most sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic health mea­sure in the his­to­ry of T&T.”

Asked what teething is­sues may arise as the vac­cine roll-out pro­gramme is ex­e­cut­ed to­day, Deyals­ingh begged for pa­tience and un­der­stand­ing from both the pop­u­la­tion and the me­dia in the next few weeks. He said de­spite var­i­ous sim­u­la­tions, “it is on­ly when you go live that some things will oc­cur.”

“There are go­ing to be is­sues al­though it doesn’t mean we didn’t plan. But on­ly when you roll out…in re­al­i­ty, some is­sues are go­ing to show up,” Deyals­ingh said.

As­sur­ing the coun­try that con­tin­gency mea­sures are al­ready in place, Deyals­ingh said they too will be nav­i­gat­ing the sit­u­a­tion as it comes and ad­dress­ing any “un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances.”

For those who are over 60 years but not reg­is­tered with a pub­lic health clin­ic and are won­der­ing if they can ac­cess the vac­cine, Deyals­ingh said, “We are cater­ing for two groups. Those in the pub­lic health sys­tem…on their clin­ic days they do not have to make an ap­point­ment and on non-clin­ic days, if you are over 60 with di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion, et cetera … you can phone in, go in and make an ap­point­ment so it is open to both health care work­ers and per­sons over 60 if you are in the pub­lic health sys­tem or if you are not.”