KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Al­though some cit­i­zens fear the COVID-19 vac­cine is a ploy by glob­al au­thor­i­ties to al­ter the hu­man genome, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says he will be first in line for the in­oc­u­la­tion when the drug reach­es Trinidad and To­ba­go. So con­fi­dent is he in the sci­ence, Row­ley said he will even rec­om­mend the vac­cine to his fam­i­ly. Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s COVID-19 me­dia con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain, Row­ley said sci­ence was the best ba­sis to un­der­stand and re­spond to the virus while ig­no­rance was not. As a five-year-old boy in Ma­son Hall, To­ba­go, Row­ley said even then he trust­ed the sci­ence. He re­called his pri­ma­ry school years when he got vac­ci­nat­ed for small­pox and then as a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, en­sur­ing he was im­mu­nised so he could trav­el to Eu­rope. He said vac­ci­na­tions were around a long time and were proven to work.

“I trust the rigours of the sci­en­tif­ic in­put at the labs and the in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies that are su­per­vis­ing the work, the eth­i­cal be­hav­iour and the sci­en­tif­ic num­bers of those who put for­ward the out­come. So when WHO signs off on what is ac­cept­able as a vac­cine for the peo­ple of Trinidad & To­ba­go, I will be the first in line to have my vac­cine,” Row­ley said.

He told Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh that he could be sec­ond in line.

He added: “As long as it is signed off by WHO as the sci­en­tif­ic prod­uct for this pur­pose, I have no hes­i­ta­tion in tak­ing it my­self or rec­om­mend­ing it for my fam­i­ly. There is noth­ing that you can of­fer to the world that will get 100 per cent sup­port from the hu­man pop­u­la­tion and there­fore, I will not be fazed by the com­ments about what vac­cines we can and can­not get.”

Jok­ing­ly, he said he un­der­stood the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme is de­signed to breed new hu­man be­ings who could be ma­nip­u­lat­ed by their smart­phones.

“I read too much of Dick Tra­cy when I was grow­ing up to al­low that.”

He said health­care and el­der­ly care providers would be in the first group for vac­ci­na­tion when it ar­rives here. How­ev­er, he said the promised num­bers are be­ing re­duced and he would not be sur­prised if the first batch sent to T&T is not the per­cent­age con­tained in the Gov­ern­ment’s agree­ment.

While the Gov­ern­ment looks for­ward to vac­cines in the first half of 2021, the dis­cov­ery of a COVID-19 vari­ant (VUI-202012/01) brings some un­cer­tain­ty on the over­all ef­fec­tive­ness, ac­cord­ing to Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram.

Paras­ram said he re­ceived com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion that the vari­ant was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion from De­cem­ber 1, ex­plain­ing it was a mu­ta­tion of the virus. He said re­searchers cat­e­gorise virus mu­ta­tions as Anti­genic Shifts; which are small changes in the genes or Anti­genic Shift; an abrupt or large change in a virus, re­sult­ing in new pro­teins.

While there can be im­pli­ca­tions for treat­ment and vac­cine ef­fi­ca­cy with drifts, Paras­ram said it was too ear­ly to tell what kind of mu­ta­tion took place. Re­gard­ing the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech vac­cine, he said the com­pa­ny stat­ed that it re­quired two weeks to de­ter­mine the mu­ta­tion’s im­pact on vac­cine ef­fi­ca­cy and it will present its find­ings to the world.

“I do not want to pre­empt what they are go­ing to find to say that it is not go­ing to work in the same form or fash­ion. Let them have the two weeks, do the re­search, and I am sure they will come back to say what they found at that point in time,” Paras­ram said.

The new strain was found re­cent­ly in the Unit­ed King­dom, South Africa, Den­mark, Aus­tralia, Italy, Ice­land and the Nether­lands.

While there are claims that the new strain has high­er trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty, Paras­ram said the re­search is still out­stand­ing and he will wait for the re­searchers’ find­ings.

Mean­while, Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor-Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion Dr Av­ery Hinds said as Christ­mas shop­ping has in­creased over the last few weeks, the dai­ly case­load is trend­ing up­ward. He said two weeks ago, the “rolling sev­en-day av­er­age” was around 15 cas­es per day, while it is now 18-19 cas­es-per-day.

Al­though the Min­istry of Health ex­pect­ed this as shop­ping and min­gling in­creased, Hinds said it re­flects in the case num­bers. He warned that if this con­tin­ues, the num­bers will con­tin­ue to grow.

As peo­ple com­plete last-minute shop­ping on Christ­mas Eve and rush to Box­ing Day sales, Tho­racic Med­ical Di­rec­tor at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal, Dr Michelle Trot­man, al­so urged cit­i­zens to fol­low the min­istry’s guide­lines for safe busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

Trot­man warned that some busi­ness­es were not ad­her­ing to the guide­lines to al­low 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty. She said as her team ob­served the pub­lic, the were see­ing crowd­ed stores where peo­ple were not ad­e­quate­ly dis­tanc­ing them­selves from each oth­er.

“Make it your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that if you go to those ar­eas as I do, Min­is­ter Young does, CMO does, and you are not com­fort­able, re­move your­self from that en­vi­ron­ment,” Trot­man said.

With To­ba­go ho­tels and guest hous­es heav­i­ly booked this week­end, Row­ley al­so warned Trinida­di­ans that the is­land was not a free-up zone. He said the po­lice would thwart plans to host par­ties and urge cit­i­zens to not let the gains made in the bat­tle against COVID-19 be un­done by ir­re­spon­si­ble ac­tion in one week.