Un­der the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act, the THA is re­spon­si­ble for health­care on the sis­ter is­land and there­fore there may be some who feel that the roll­out of the COVID-19 vac­cines in To­ba­go should be sub­ject to the poli­cies of the THA.

While this may not be an un­ten­able po­si­tion, what ap­pears to be un­ac­cept­able are re­ports that the As­traZeneca vac­cines are be­ing dis­trib­uted to young mem­bers of the As­sem­bly and some of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion staff of the Di­vi­sion of Health Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment of the THA, even be­fore front­line work­ers and the el­der­ly with co-mor­bidi­ties get ac­cess.

The no­tion that new­ly-elect­ed As­sem­bly­man Kelvin Mor­ris could an­nounce on so­cial me­dia that he was ex­pect­ed to get the vac­cine and when chal­lenged on it in­sist­ed that there was noth­ing wrong with it is un­con­scionable.

Lest we for­get, To­ba­go got 10 per cent of the to­tal from the first batch 33,600 vac­cines re­ceived by this coun­try, even though its pop­u­la­tion is less than five per cent. There­fore, it al­ready means that it is twice eas­i­er to get the vac­cine in To­ba­go than in Trinidad, based on raw num­bers.

Be­yond that, it is un­ac­cept­able that a fresh­man As­sem­bly­man would be giv­en the vac­cine be­fore Mem­bers of the Cab­i­net of T&T, or be­fore Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, who have been told they have to wait for when more vac­cines ar­rive in the coun­try.

Glob­al­ly, the chal­lenge to ac­cess vac­cines is be­ing played out as coun­tries move to pro­tect their pop­u­la­tions from the coro­n­avirus that has claimed so many lives. T&T has not been spared from its rav­ages.

The vac­cine and the race to in­oc­u­late enough peo­ple and achieve herd im­mu­ni­ty is a chal­lenge for all gov­ern­ments and the re­al­i­ty is that T&T has dropped the ball and is play­ing catchup with oth­er Caribbean coun­tries, let alone the rest of the world.

It means that we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to roll out the lim­it­ed num­ber of vac­cines in keep­ing with best prac­tice. To­ba­go is not unique and would do well to fol­low the glob­al ex­pe­ri­ences of in­oc­u­lat­ing health work­ers and front­line staff, fol­lowed by the el­der­ly, who are most vul­ner­a­ble to the worst ef­fects of the virus.

Every­body should be ul­ti­mate­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, as it is the one way of en­sur­ing that the coun­try has an ex­tra lay­er of pro­tec­tion so that cit­i­zens could re­turn to a lev­el of nor­mal­cy and start to re­build an econ­o­my that has all but been brought to its knees by the im­pact of COVID-19. We are glad that Mr Mor­ris and oth­ers in the THA are will­ing to be vac­ci­nat­ed but it must be done with or­der and re­spect for the process.

To­ba­go must know that with au­ton­o­my comes re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and it is dis­ap­point­ing to learn of the de­vel­op­ments on the sis­ter is­land.

Politi­cians have great re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, the first of which is the pro­tec­tion of the most vul­ner­a­ble in the so­ci­ety and we must en­sure that those at great­est risk of poor out­comes from COVID-19 are the pri­or­i­ty.

Noth­ing else is ac­cept­able.