It’s Vac­ci­na­tion Week in the Amer­i­c­as and the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion is urg­ing peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed to bring the world clos­er to an end to the dev­as­tat­ing im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

More than 1.03 bil­lion vac­cine dos­es have been ad­min­is­tered world­wide, equal to 13 dos­es for every 100 peo­ple. But there is a stark gap be­tween vac­ci­na­tion pro­grammes in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, with some yet to re­port a sin­gle dose be­ing ad­min­is­tered.

PA­HO di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Et­tiene lament­ed yes­ter­day that over 700 mil­lion peo­ple in the Amer­i­c­as re­main at risk be­cause of in­equitable vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion.

The slo­gan of this year’s vac­ci­na­tion week is “Vac­cines Bring­ing us Clos­er,” but the pro­gramme roll­out across the globe has done lit­tle to bring us clos­er. The fact is there is a huge di­vide with many coun­tries still un­able to ac­cess vac­cines.

COVID-19 has al­ready claimed more than 1.4 mil­lion lives in this re­gion, with T&T reg­is­ter­ing 159 deaths up to yes­ter­day. It is clear the vac­cines are crit­i­cal­ly need­ed.

Yes­ter­day, the Unit­ed States re­vealed it will be­gin shar­ing its stock of 60 mil­lion As­traZeneca vac­cines with the world once it clears fed­er­al safe­ty re­views in the com­ing months.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, our vac­cine roll­out start­ed in ear­ly April and up to yes­ter­day 41,549 sin­gle dos­es had been ad­min­is­tered. That’s about three point one per cent of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion. Yes­ter­day health of­fi­cials said roll­out of the sec­ond shots will be­gin on June 7th. T&T got 33,600 vac­cines from CO­V­AX and 40,000 dos­es from In­dia and ini­tial­ly, got a gift of 2,000 vac­cines from Bar­ba­dos.

Yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Health an­nounced there were five new cas­es of the Brazil­ian Vari­ant, bring­ing to nine the num­ber of cas­es of this dan­ger­ous strain to this coun­try. Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, there is no epi­demi­o­log­i­cal link to the cas­es iden­ti­fied in the vary­ing ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tions in this coun­try.

Be that as it may, it is a deeply wor­ry­ing de­vel­op­ment.

For T&T to achieve the re­quired herd im­mu­ni­ty of 70% of the pop­u­la­tion, it means 900,000 peo­ple must be in­oc­u­lat­ed. At the cur­rent rate of ac­cess­ing vac­cines, this could take years in T&T.

One can on­ly hope that the coun­tries with the where­with­al to share vac­cines help oth­er coun­tries achieve a lev­el of vac­ci­na­tion that would help curb the spread of the virus.

Now is not the time to be hoard­ing vac­cines. The world needs to work to­geth­er to fight this virus that con­tin­ues to mu­tate.

It is time the Min­istry of Health steps up its pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign to en­sure peo­ple who are hes­i­tant about get­ting the vac­cine are re­as­sured it is safe. The ben­e­fits far out­weigh the risks. Stop­ping the pan­dem­ic re­quires us­ing all the tools avail­able to us. This means we must con­tin­ue to wear our masks, so­cial dis­tance, sani­tise, wash our hands and if we can get the vac­cine do so. As we, like many oth­ers, await more vac­cines, our way of life must re­flect the re­al dan­ger posed by the virus. We must take noth­ing for grant­ed.