An­na-Lisa Paul

El­der­ly peo­ple aged 65 years and over, who are to re­ceive their first dose of the COVID-19 vac­cine, will to­day be giv­en ‘VIP treat­ment’ as the Triple E Sys­tem—the El­der­ly Ex­press Ex­pe­ri­ence—is rolled out.

Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, a Mo­bile El­der­ly Ex­press Ex­pe­ri­ence will al­so be ex­tend­ed to se­nior cit­i­zens in old-aged homes and to shut-ins who are un­able to vis­it com­mu­ni­ty health cen­tres that are des­ig­nat­ed vac­ci­na­tion sites.

The VIP pro­gramme will fea­ture a speedy screen­ing process fol­lowed by vac­ci­na­tion, whilst en­sur­ing the pa­tients’ com­fort and se­cu­ri­ty through­out.

Hing­ing this lat­est mod­el on tweaks made to the ini­tial ap­point­ment sys­tem that was in­tro­duced months ago, of­fi­cials at the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia they will no longer be us­ing the days-old al­pha­bet sys­tem im­ple­ment­ed just last week.

In­stead, those se­lect­ed to be vac­ci­nat­ed to­day were cho­sen from among peo­ple reg­is­tered at chron­ic dis­ease clin­ics and al­so those pri­ma­ry care pa­tients pulled from hos­pi­tals.

North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) CEO Davlin Thomas was ex­cit­ed to wel­come peo­ple.

“This is all about en­sur­ing their needs are met re­spect­ful­ly and in a time­ly man­ner, while they are un­der our care.”

Say­ing old-aged homes and the shut-ins were se­lect­ed by the dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cials, Thomas said the tar­get­ed ap­proach was to en­sure this vul­ner­a­ble sub­set of the pop­u­la­tion re­ceived the care and at­ten­tion they de­serve.

Asked how many first-dose vac­cines will be ad­min­is­tered or if this num­ber will be re­strict­ed to the 50, as seen last week, he said, “It de­pends on the health cen­tre. Each health cen­tre will have a dif­fer­ent amount based on their ca­pac­i­ty.”

Pressed on how the NCRHA in­tends to con­duct the sec­ond-dose vac­cine roll­out with­out any mis­steps, Thomas said this as­pect was be­ing done at des­ig­nat­ed sites away from health cen­tres to avoid con­gre­ga­tions.

He ex­plained that there were al­ready es­tab­lished pro­to­cols in place and cit­i­zens re­ceiv­ing their sec­ond shots should ex­pe­ri­ence no prob­lems when they present their NCRHA Im­mu­ni­sa­tion Card.

Thomas ac­knowl­edged they had ex­pe­ri­enced two bad days, as hun­dreds de­scend­ed on health cen­tres last Wednes­day and Thurs­day ex­pect­ing to be vac­ci­nat­ed as a first-come/first-served sys­tem was in­tro­duced, fol­lowed by the al­pha­bet­i­cal or­der se­lec­tion sys­tem.

Mean­while, East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (ER­HA) CEO Ronald Tsoi-a-Fatt said the ex­act same sys­tems will be rolled out in his ju­ris­dic­tion.

Both men said among the pa­tients to­day will be those who would have made ap­point­ments be­fore but had not yet re­ceived their vac­cines.