Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

Trinidad and To­ba­go will be in line to re­ceive COVID vac­cines with­in the first quar­ter of 2021.

In an in­ter­view on To­ba­go Chan­nel 5 yes­ter­day, Dr Row­ley said, the Min­istry of Health would fo­cus on those groups be­ing ex­posed the most, in­clud­ing health­care work­ers and the el­der­ly who are more sus­cep­ti­ble, fol­lowed by the rest of the pop­u­la­tion. He said T&T was a part of the CO­V­AX group among 162 coun­tries, putting this coun­try in a much bet­ter place to re­spond to the virus.

“How it was done, all the coun­tries put up mon­ey to dri­ve the sci­ence on the un­der­stand­ing that when we find the cure, it would be shared on a par­tic­u­lar for­mu­la around every­body world­wide and we are a part of that, so our turn will come. We are an­tic­i­pat­ing that giv­en the num­bers be­ing pro­duced and the avail­abil­i­ty and its use go­ing for­ward, that we, some­time March go­ing in­to April, Trinidad and To­ba­go should be in line to get our share,” he said.

He said vac­cines would be dis­trib­uted on a phased ba­sis.

“We are look­ing for enough in the first in­stance to do some­where be­tween 20 per cent and 30 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion and you get dif­fer­ent tranch­es and of course we al­so an­tic­i­pate that dif­fer­ent sup­pli­ers can come in­to the mar­ket as we go for­ward so it be­comes more avail­able,” he said

Com­ment­ing on the new strain of the virus, Dr Row­ley said, peo­ple should con­tin­ue to fol­low the stip­u­lat­ed guide­lines to pro­tect them­selves.

“Bi­o­log­i­cal­ly it is pos­si­ble that a new strain could come up which makes the test­ed and ap­proved vac­cines im­po­tent, so we are not see­ing that and the re­ports are and of course the sci­en­tif­ic in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue world­wide on new strains as well as the old strains to put hu­mans in a bet­ter po­si­tion to hold the forth. We still will have to do that phys­i­cal thing which is try and avoid the virus com­ing to you.”