As the Gov­ern­ment push­es to ac­quire more COVID-19 vac­cines and aims to vac­ci­nate 600,000 peo­ple by the end of Sep­tem­ber, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says they are now con­cerned the coun­try may well have more vac­cines than peo­ple will­ing to take them.

And he is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about teach­ers.

Row­ley made the com­ments at the week­ly post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Prime Min­is­ter’s To­ba­go res­i­dence in Blenheim yes­ter­day.

He said thus far, there has been mass vac­ci­na­tions of peo­ple in the su­per­mar­ket in­dus­try, man­u­fac­tur­ing, con­struc­tion and food sec­tors.

How­ev­er, he lament­ed that many teach­ers re­main un­vac­ci­nat­ed de­spite the Gov­ern­ment’s mass vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme that tar­get­ed them ear­ly on.

On­ly this week, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion launched its mass vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve seek­ing to fa­cil­i­tate all teach­ing and non-teach­ing staff be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed.

This was an­nounced af­ter an­oth­er 5,000 vac­cines were set aside for teach­ers.

Pri­or to this, 4,000 vac­cines were al­lo­cat­ed for all teach­ers and ex­am in­vig­i­la­tors ahead of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am on Ju­ly 1 and those who were ad­min­is­ter­ing the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil ex­ams. The Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion dis­closed back then that close to that num­ber had been vac­ci­nat­ed.

Yes­ter­day, Row­ley said the slow rate of vac­ci­na­tion among teach­ers was a source of con­cern, as the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing to re­turn the na­tion’s chil­dren to in-per­son class­es when the new school year be­gins in Sep­tem­ber.

“I am very dis­ap­point­ed to hear that the arrange­ment made for teach­ers was not tak­en up. That has me very con­cerned, be­cause I am hop­ing that the teach­ers would get vac­ci­nat­ed so that by the time we get around to school in Sep­tem­ber, we would not have the is­sue of vac­ci­na­tion of teach­ers and chil­dren...I hope that is just a tem­po­rary set­back there. We would like to have as many as our teach­ers vac­ci­nat­ed as we go for­ward.”

Since March 2020, in-per­son learn­ing had been halt­ed af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter or­dered the clo­sure of schools to pre­vent the spread of COVID-19.

While SEA and sec­ondary lev­el stu­dents were able to sit ex­ams and in some cas­es at­tend­ed phys­i­cal class­es on a lim­it­ed ba­sis, all ef­forts by the Gov­ern­ment to fa­cil­i­tate in-per­son learn­ing for stu­dents were oth­er­wise thwart­ed be­cause of then ris­ing COVID cas­es.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has draft­ed pro­posed guide­lines for the re­open­ing of schools which is now be­ing con­sid­ered by stake­hold­ers.

In the mean­time, Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment will now be­gin tar­get­ing peo­ple in the re­tail sec­tor for mass vac­ci­na­tion.

“The next big group that is on the hori­zon is the re­tail sup­ply. Those like malls and re­tail stores.”

While de­bate con­tin­ues na­tion­al­ly about un­vac­ci­nat­ed em­ploy­ees, the Prime Min­is­ter was asked if he would keep those who were not vac­ci­nat­ed in his se­cu­ri­ty de­tail.

The ques­tion arose af­ter a re­port sur­faced yes­ter­day that Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes had asked that un­vac­ci­nat­ed se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers be trans­ferred to oth­er ar­eas, away from her and her 92-year-old moth­er Phyl­lis Weekes.

Yes­ter­day, Row­ley said he too had tak­en such a po­si­tion but still suc­cumbed to the virus.

“I too have tak­en a sim­i­lar de­ci­sion be­cause I am in the group of peo­ple who are par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­posed to the virus, so I will do every­thing pos­si­ble to re­duce or min­imise my ex­po­sure to be­ing in­fect­ed. I did that, but un­for­tu­nate­ly, I was in­fect­ed.”

Row­ley test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 on April 6, 2021, the same day he was due to get his first shot of the COVID vac­cine. He even­tu­al­ly got his first dose of the Sinopharm vac­cine on Ju­ly 13.

De­spite his per­son­al po­si­tion, the Prime Min­is­ter stressed that Cab­i­net is not con­sid­er­ing a manda­to­ry pro­gramme. How­ev­er, he en­cour­aged To­bag­o­ni­ans to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

“You nev­er know when you will be ex­posed to the virus.

Ad­dress­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in To­ba­go, fol­low­ing news that 11,683 vac­ci­na­tions were ad­min­is­tered so far, of which 9,189 peo­ple had their sec­ond dos­es, the Prime Min­is­ter said he was “sat­is­fied” the is­land’s health sec­tor was do­ing its best to curb the num­ber of in­fec­tions.

He said af­ter hear­ing of a “clus­ter” of in­fec­tions at the hos­pi­tal last week, he sent a team of med­ical pro­fes­sion­als to see whether To­ba­go health of­fi­cials were ad­her­ing to na­tion­al pro­to­cols.

He said based on the team’s re­port, he is “sat­is­fied.”

Yes­ter­day, To­ba­go record­ed its high­est num­ber of new COVID-19 cas­es record­ed in 24 hours since March 2020. The new cas­es stood at 52, bring­ing the to­tal ac­tive cas­es to 288.