Rishard Khan 
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt 

 Slow and steady progress is be­ing made in ac­quir­ing Mon­key­pox vac­cines for the coun­try as T&T is ex­pect­ed to sign an in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment by week's end. 

T&T has placed an in­dica­tive or­der for 2,000 dos­es of the vac­cines through the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) and ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­cent­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the coun­try. 

"We got cor­re­spon­dence from PA­HO that we have to do the usu­al in­dem­ni­fi­ca­tion agree­ment by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, same process that we had used in the past to pro­cure COVID vac­cines," he said. 

Mean­while, the min­is­ter said the coun­try is await­ing the re­sults of one mon­key­pox sam­ple sub­mit­ted for test­ing. To date, the coun­try has sub­mit­ted 13 sam­ples to test for the dis­ease at ei­ther the Trinidad Pub­lic Health Lab (TPHL) or through the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA). All re­turned neg­a­tive so far and the Min­is­ter of Health is hop­ing for the same with this pend­ing sam­ple.