There is good news ahead for T&T in terms of vac­cine ac­qui­si­tion as the next three months should see sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand dos­es ar­riv­ing in the coun­try, lead­ing to an ac­cel­er­at­ed vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.

Re­cap­ping Gov­ern­ment's ef­forts to pur­chase COVID-19 vac­cines through the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty as well as all bi-lat­er­al arrange­ments and or­ders placed with the African Med­ical Coun­cil (AMC), the Serum In­sti­tute of In­dia (SII) and Chi­na, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said on Sat­ur­day that fol­low­ing a pay­ment last week to the AMC, "We are in line to get 800,000 dos­es of the John­son & John­son one-dose vac­cines."

De­clar­ing this had changed the pic­ture com­plete­ly, he said the first batch of this vac­cine is ex­pect­ed in Au­gust.

Speak­ing dur­ing the me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's, Row­ley said for the next eight weeks, T&T's vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme would be large­ly con­fined to the third tranche of vac­cines to be ac­quired through CO­V­AX, along with a sec­ond ship­ment of the Sinopharm vac­cines which are ex­pect­ed on Thurs­day.

"We can now con­fi­dent­ly say that we have a vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme that by the next 12 weeks...June, Ju­ly, Au­gust...de­pend­ing on the ship­ping arrange­ments, we would be able to vac­ci­nate a sub­stan­tial amount of peo­ple," he said.

"Our first tar­get is a half mil­lion peo­ple in this coun­try and based on the irons we have in the fire, we can now, as I men­tioned last week, ac­cel­er­ate our vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme."

Cal­cu­lat­ing the num­bers of vac­cines ex­pect­ed in the com­ing weeks, the PM as­sured, "We can now fair­ly, rea­son­ably say that we are at the be­gin­ning of what is re­quired to bring this in­fec­tion un­der con­trol, to have some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy re­turn­ing to our coun­try and lives."

It is hoped that by Sep­tem­ber 1, the coun­try should be in a bet­ter po­si­tion in terms of a vac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tion.

Com­mend­ing a hand­ful of US gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in­clud­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris who had been ad­vanc­ing the Caribbean's po­si­tion for more vac­cines to be made avail­able, Row­ley said the US has agreed to make 25 mil­lion more vac­cines avail­able through CO­V­AX, of which six mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed to the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca.

He said the Caribbean and South Amer­i­ca were among the worst coun­tries on the re­ceiv­ing end of vac­cines right now as there were no vac­cine pro­duc­ers in this part of the world.

Mean­while, Row­ley is hop­ing the ac­cel­er­at­ed vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme could lead to stu­dents be­ing able to re­turn to schools in Sep­tem­ber as he urged peo­ple not to get caught up with vac­cine brands and ac­cept what is be­fore them.

Dis­miss­ing claims by a busi­ness­man that the pri­vate sec­tor had ac­quired a pre­ferred vac­cine, im­port­ed it in­to T&T and was dis­pens­ing it to on­ly a par­tic­u­lar seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion, the prime min­is­ter de­fend­ed both him­self and the Cab­i­net.

He said, "The Gov­ern­ment has been up­front and with the peo­ple with me as Prime Min­is­ter lead­ing from the front with the health­care sys­tem stand­ing in the breach day and night for over a year to en­sure you get the best out­come in a pan­dem­ic."

Sym­pa­this­ing with the rel­a­tives of those who had passed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, he called on the pri­vate sec­tor to work with the au­thor­i­ties to en­sure their em­ploy­ees and loved ones are vac­ci­nat­ed as soon as the op­por­tu­ni­ty presents.

Moves to re­place ap­point­ment sys­tem with a first-come/first-serve arrange­ment

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said blocks of 5,000 vac­cines each have been made avail­able to peo­ple in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try; the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor; and su­per­mar­kets/phar­ma­cies.

By mid-Ju­ly, it is ex­pect­ed that 88,900 peo­ple would have been vac­ci­nat­ed with the As­traZeneca vac­cine; while an ad­di­tion­al 50,000 will re­ceive the Sinopharm vac­cine.

Set­ting up mass vac­ci­na­tion sites to ac­com­mo­date more cit­i­zens from the var­i­ous sec­tors, Deyals­ingh said 15,000 peo­ple from sig­nif­i­cant in­dus­tries will soon be among the vac­ci­nat­ed num­bers.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the min­istry has al­so reached out to the food and bev­er­age sec­tor, as well as the pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty to get num­bers that can be ac­com­mo­dat­ed in the com­ing weeks.

In­creas­ing health fa­cil­i­ties from 32 to 36 where vac­cines are be­ing ad­min­is­tered, Deyals­ingh said they are mov­ing to re­place the ap­point­ment sys­tem with a first-come/first-serve arrange­ment.

He said as more and more vac­cines be­come avail­able, the min­istry will al­so be set­ting up mo­bile units and dri­ve-thru sites where peo­ple can ac­cess vac­cines.

8 COVID deaths, 391 new cas­es

The Min­istry of Health has record­ed eight ad­di­tion­al COVID-19 re­lat­ed deaths. The peo­ple were four el­der­ly males and three mid­dle-age fe­males with co­mor­bidi­ties, as well as one mid­dle-aged man with­out co­mor­bidi­ties. This brings the to­tal num­ber of deaths to 564. The Min­istry has al­so record­ed 391 new cas­es in the last 24 hours, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive cas­es to 10,064. There are cur­rent­ly 421 pa­tients in the hos­pi­tal, of which 44 are in HDU and 15 in ICU.