Trinidad and To­ba­go en­ters to­day with a few sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ments in the bat­tle against the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. For one thing, the cas­es and deaths con­tin­ue un­abat­ed al­though there is a plateau­ing in Trinidad. How­ev­er, the med­ical ex­perts con­tin­ue to ex­press alarm at what is hap­pen­ing in To­ba­go, where the cas­es and deaths con­tin­ue in an up­ward di­rec­tion dai­ly, cou­pled, of course, with a high lev­el of vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy on the is­land.

That vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy is al­so mir­rored on the na­tion­al front where tens of thou­sands of As­traZeneca and Pfiz­er vac­cines could be left on our hands when they ex­pire in No­vem­ber be­cause of the slow up­take by the pub­lic over­all.

The Gov­ern­ment moved from a point of un­cer­tain­ty on how and from where it would ac­quire vac­cines ear­li­er this year to giv­ing cit­i­zens the lux­u­ry of a choice of As­traZeneca, Pfiz­er, John­son and John­son and Sinopharm jabs. This was done through a com­bi­na­tion of vac­cine diplo­ma­cy with our re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos, Bermu­da, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Chi­na, In­dia, Cana­da and the Unit­ed States, and shrewd ne­go­ti­a­tions with the com­pa­nies who pro­duce the vac­cines.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the ar­gu­ment from cer­tain sec­tors of the pub­lic shift­ed from con­ster­na­tion over the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ef­fi­cien­cy at se­cur­ing vac­cine sup­plies to now of­fer­ing free­dom of choice as an ar­gu­ment for per­sons’ re­fusal to in­oc­u­late them­selves against the dead­ly virus now that jabs are over­whelm­ing­ly avail­able.

T&T-born US-based rap­per Oni­ka “Nic­ki Mi­naj” Ma­haraj en­tered that fray with­in the last 48 hours when she claimed a rel­a­tive’s friend here de­vel­oped a swollen tes­ti­cle af­ter get­ting in­oc­u­lat­ed. In Twit­ter con­ver­sa­tion, Ma­haraj sug­gest­ed this sit­u­a­tion had fu­elled her own con­ster­na­tion over tak­ing a vac­cine — al­though ad­mit­ting she had al­ready con­tract­ed the virus. Nat­u­ral­ly, in the me­dia firestorm cre­at­ed since then, Ma­haraj was tak­en to task by med­ical ex­perts, world lead­ers and or­gan­i­sa­tions, all deny­ing any sug­ges­tion vac­cines could lead to im­po­ten­cy and slam­ming her for spread­ing such mis­in­for­ma­tion on her so­cial me­dia plat­form of over 180 mil­lion fol­low­ers.

And while all this was go­ing on, with Trinida­di­ans lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly slam­ming Ma­haraj for bring­ing the coun­try in­to dis­re­pute, the Min­istry of Health was seem­ing­ly asleep and made no at­tempt to de­bunk Ma­haraj’s claim. In­deed, in a week that start­ed off with a claim by an in­di­vid­ual on so­cial me­dia that a rel­a­tive, pur­port­ed­ly a stu­dent, had died af­ter tak­ing a sec­ond Pfiz­er shot, the min­istry should have been shout­ing to the hills in re­sponse here as well.

At a time when even the lo­cal an­ti-vaxxers are putting out mis­in­for­ma­tion hourly on so­cial me­dia, in par­tic­u­lar, the Min­istry of Health is still not proac­tive with its own cam­paign of truth, which is crit­i­cal giv­en the slow down in the vac­cine up­take across T&T. As the US’ di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Al­ler­gy and In­fec­tious Dis­eases, Dr An­tho­ny Fau­ci, said in re­sponse to the Ma­haraj back­lash yes­ter­day, the on­ly way to dis­pel mis­in­for­ma­tion is to put cor­rect in­for­ma­tion and de­bunk the un­truths in the pub­lic do­main. T&T’s goal of reach­ing herd im­mu­ni­ty must not be de­railed by this slip-up from a daugh­ter of the soil. We thus await the Min­istry of Health’s ad­just­ment to its com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­sponse to un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tions like this and oth­ers ahead.