Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go will re­ceive on­ly a third of the first batch of vac­cines al­lo­cat­ed to it by the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty come month-end. 

Dur­ing a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said they would have had to wait un­til May to re­ceive the full quo­ta of 100,800 dos­es orig­i­nal­ly promised. In­stead, he said the min­istry de­cid­ed to take a small­er batch of 33,600 up­front. 

“We were al­lo­cat­ed 100,800 (for col­lec­tion) ac­cord­ing to PA­HO (Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion) be­tween March and May ... we de­cid­ed to go this route and not to wait for the en­tire ship­ment be­cause you nev­er can tell what can hap­pen and an en­tire ship­ment might be de­layed,” Deyals­ingh ex­plained. 

“We felt at this stage, with things be­ing so un­cer­tain in the glob­al scene with sup­ply not be­ing able to keep up with de­mand, that it is bet­ter to take this first tranche of 33,600 and be­gin our vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.”

PA­HO’s three-month win­dow for the de­liv­ery of vac­cines was not pre­vi­ous­ly dis­closed to the pub­lic. In its ini­tial an­nounce­ment of the al­lo­ca­tion on Jan­u­ary 30, the min­istry said the coun­try was “al­lo­cat­ed an ini­tial 100,000 to 120,000 dos­es of the Ox­ford-As­traZeneca COVID-19 vac­cine via the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty. This first al­lo­ca­tion of the COVID-19 vac­cine will be de­liv­ered to Trinidad and To­ba­go by March 2021.” At that time, it was main­tained that the dos­es would ar­rive by the end of Feb­ru­ary, ear­ly March. Al­though the min­istry main­tained the broad fig­ure of 100,000 to 120,000 ex­pect­ed dos­es up to late Feb­ru­ary, the CO­V­AX Fa­cil­i­ty In­ter­im Dis­tri­b­u­tion Fore­cast pub­lished by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) on Feb­ru­ary 3 list­ed T&T for re­ceipt of 100,800 dos­es. On Feb­ru­ary 27, Deyals­ingh con­firmed the spe­cif­ic fig­ure. How­ev­er, by then the ex­pect­ed ar­rival date of the dos­es shift­ed to the end of March. 

The min­istry has been fac­ing an up­hill chal­lenge when it comes to ac­quir­ing vac­cines - much like many oth­er small na­tions - as the sup­ply short­age con­tin­ues to plague the world. Deyals­ingh said the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty is not im­mune to this.

“So we are hap­py to be re­ceiv­ing 33,600 and the bal­ance of 67,000 would come, I am told, some­time in April in­to ear­ly May,” Deyals­ingh said.

The 33,600 dos­es will cost tax­pay­ers US$148,084.06 and pay­ment is ex­pect­ed to be made to the PA­HO re­volv­ing fund with­in the com­ing days, he said. Deyals­ingh said they made an of­fer to PA­HO to pay the mon­ey for the re­main­ing dos­es up­front to se­cure them. 

“We made that of­fer last week Wednes­day or Thurs­day I be­lieve and they are look­ing at it so we could se­cure the oth­er tranche of 67,000,” he said.

Mean­while, Ja­maica re­ceived a batch of Co­v­ishield-As­traZeneca vac­cines from the In­di­an gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day.

Asked whether he had any re­al­is­tic time­line or pro­jec­tions for when T&T could achieve herd im­mu­ni­ty giv­en the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, Deyals­ingh said, “The ques­tion you ask as to when - we can­not give a date be­cause sim­ply, we are not in com­plete con­trol of the sup­ply of vac­cines.”

Re­fer­ring to an ar­ti­cle on the week­end which spoke to the glob­al fight for vac­cines, that one or two coun­tries are now su­ing CO­V­AX be­cause they can’t get vac­cines, Deyals­ingh said the fact that T&T’s COVID num­bers are good may ac­tu­al­ly be hin­der­ing the ac­qui­si­tion process.

“So ac­quir­ing herd im­mu­ni­ty de­pends on a se­ries of fac­tors; sup­ply of vac­cines, whether CO­V­AX can de­liv­er, the suc­cess we would have in bi­lat­er­al talks. The Prime Min­is­ter of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go and CARI­COM chair­man has called for a world con­fer­ence on the eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of vac­cines be­cause what is hap­pen­ing now, ... is an in­equitable dis­tri­b­u­tion of vac­cines. You have the rich­er coun­tries, big­ger coun­tries, where the vac­cines are be­ing man­u­fac­tured, hav­ing more vac­cines than they need.”