Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is ex­pect­ed to speak to­day on when Gov­ern­ment’s pub­lic sec­tor qua­si safe zone plan will ac­tu­al­ly start.

This was in­di­cat­ed by Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials on Fri­day.

In Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh was asked by UNC MP Rishi Seecher­an if he could con­firm the plan will start on Jan­u­ary 17.

The plan in­volves pub­lic sec­tor di­vi­sions to be manned on­ly by work­ers who have proof of vac­ci­na­tion or ap­pro­pri­ate ex­emp­tion.

A De­cem­ber 21, 2021 memo from the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­istry to oth­er min­istries had giv­en Jan­u­ary 17 as the start date and the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­istry called for min­istries to give fig­ures by Jan­u­ary 4 for vac­ci­nat­ed, un­vac­ci­nat­ed and staff with ex­emp­tions.

On Fri­day, Deyals­ingh replied to Seecher­an and said: “As pub­licly stat­ed, the Prime Min­is­ter will ad­dress this is­sue in the short­est pos­si­ble space of time.”

On Thurs­day, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Allyson West had said the is­sue would be ad­dressed in “the next day or two.”

On Fri­day, oth­er of­fi­cials in­di­cat­ed Row­ley will speak on the mat­ter at to­day’s health me­dia brief­ing. Row­ley last ad­dressed the brief­ing on De­cem­ber 18 when he an­nounced the safe zone pol­i­cy.

Al­so on Fri­day, UNC’s Rudy In­dars­ingh asked Deyals­ingh if un­vac­ci­nat­ed work­ers would be locked out on Mon­day. Deyals­ingh said the ques­tion of lock­ing out work­ers doesn’t arise at this time.

In­dars­ingh asked if the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­istry’s De­cem­ber 31 memo was re­voked. Deyals­ingh said the mat­ter will be dealt with by the ap­pro­pri­ate min­is­ter and peo­ple, it wasn’t a Health Min­istry mat­ter and all those things would be clar­i­fied in the “short­est space of time.”

Min­is­ter: Gov­ern­ment in ne­go­ti­a­tion for Paxlovid

On Seecher­an’s oth­er queries, Deyals­ingh said two lines of en­quiry are be­ing pur­sued in­to re­cent re­ports by youths at a NATUC me­dia brief­ing about de­vel­op­ing se­ri­ous side ef­fects af­ter tak­ing the Pfiz­er vac­cine.

Deyals­ingh said au­thor­i­ties were check­ing their vac­ci­na­tion data­bas­es to see if those peo­ple were in fact vac­ci­nat­ed.

He said, “Once that’s de­ter­mined, in­for­ma­tion will be sent to the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer for clin­i­cal re­view. We’re al­so re­view­ing the RHA sys­tem to see if these per­sons pre­sent­ed at any of our fa­cil­i­ties. If they suf­fered ad­verse af­fects all med­ical pro­to­cols will be fol­lowed. We have to find out their vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus, and if the ef­fects not­ed were in fact due to vac­cine or any oth­er pur­pose or rea­sons, pa­tient-cen­tred or ex­ter­nal. Based on that an ap­pro­pri­ate treat­ment plan will be im­ple­ment­ed.”

Deyals­ingh al­so said Gov­ern­ment is in ne­go­ti­a­tion for Pfiz­er’s an­ti–vi­ral COVID drug Paxlovid. But that is even in short sup­ply in the US where it’s man­u­fac­tured.

He not­ed two oth­er drugs ap­proved by WHO– an oral im­muno­sup­pres­sant for se­vere­ly ill peo­ple. An­oth­er made by Glaxo Smith Kline is a mon­o­clon­al an­ti-body to be giv­en in­tra­venous­ly for those at high risk for hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion.

Deyals­ingh warned these are not gar­den va­ri­ety COVID drugs but they car­ry cri­te­ria for use and aren’t sub­sti­tutes for vac­ci­na­tion.

Gov­ern­ment is al­so in talks with all oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers in­clud­ing Mer­ck for its an­ti-vi­ral drug.

Deyals­ingh added that T&T is num­ber 30 out of 190 coun­tries on the Worl­dome­ter glob­al COVID 19 data­base.

He said oth­er well re­sourced states are high­er than this coun­try.

“At this point in the high­est peak of our pan­dem­ic, T&T’s case fa­tal­i­ty ra­tio is around three. Glob­al av­er­age is be­tween two and three,” he said.