No ap­point­ments will be nec­es­sary for chil­dren to re­ceive their dose of the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech's COVID-19 vac­cine from Wednes­day, ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

Some 14 sites have been con­firmed as venues for the vac­ci­na­tion of 12- to 18-year-olds in this coun­try, with the Pfiz­er COVID-19 vac­cine.

The Min­istry of Health is meet­ing with stake­hold­ers on Tues­day, to de­ter­mine if preg­nant women will be al­lowed to re­ceive the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech's Comir­naty COVID-19 vac­cine.

The Min­istry of Health is wit­ness­ing an uptick in the num­ber of pae­di­atric COVID-19 cas­es, three of which are cur­rent­ly ward­ed at hos­pi­tal and are "se­vere­ly ill."
The rev­e­la­tion came from the min­istry's Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards on Sat­ur­day dur­ing the Prime Min­is­ter's COVID-19 press con­fer­ence. 
"We have had a slight uptick in the num­ber of pae­di­atric cas­es, es­pe­cial­ly in the South West RHA (Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty) which cov­ers San Fer­nan­do and the south­ern re­gion. There are cur­rent­ly three se­vere­ly ill chil­dren that are hos­pi­talised as con­firmed COVID pos­i­tive cas­es," she said.
"This is a new de­vel­op­ment that we have no­ticed."
Ab­dool-Richards was un­able to re­lease fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the chil­dren due to pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. She said they were among 49 pa­tients who are cur­rent­ly in a sim­i­lar con­di­tion. 
Ques­tioned by Guardian Me­dia, she re­vealed that these chil­dren were be­ing test­ed for the pres­ence of the more high­ly trans­mis­si­ble Delta vari­ant. The re­quired ge­nom­ic se­quenc­ing is con­duct­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Health. The team is led by Pro­fes­sor of Mol­e­c­u­lar Bi­ol­o­gy and Vi­rol­o­gy Chris­tine Car­ring­ton.
The Delta vari­ant first iden­ti­fied in In­dia in De­cem­ber is not on­ly more high­ly trans­mis­si­ble, but there are al­so in­di­ca­tions that it is dead­lier than the orig­i­nal Wuhan strain. Wor­ry­ing­ly, ev­i­dence out of coun­tries like the Unit­ed States where this vari­ant is the pre­dom­i­nant strain in cir­cu­la­tion sig­nals an in­crease in pae­di­atric cas­es and dis­ease sever­i­ty. That means more chil­dren are be­ing in­fect­ed and are get­ting sick­er. 
The coun­try con­firmed its first cas­es of the Delta vari­ant on Thurs­day in two un­vac­ci­nat­ed na­tion­als who re­cent­ly re­turned to the coun­try. But while these were im­port­ed cas­es and by of­fi­cial ac­counts are con­tained, health of­fi­cials have not ruled out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the vari­ant cur­rent­ly cir­cu­lat­ing among the pop­u­la­tion yet to be de­tect­ed. 

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith is con­fi­dent that more po­lice of­fi­cers will be vac­ci­nat­ed as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) steps up ef­forts to in­crease vac­ci­na­tion rates among of­fi­cers.

Sec­ondary school stu­dents writ­ing the CSEC and CAPE ex­am­i­na­tion will be the first to re­turn to phys­i­cal class­es when the time is deemed right, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said on Sat­ur­day. 
"Our plan is to bring out our sec­ondary school chil­dren start­ing first and fore­most with those in the ex­am year—Forms four, five and six—we bring them out first," he said dur­ing the COVID-19 press con­fer­ence. 
As more of the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion is vac­ci­nat­ed, the rest of the class­es will be brought out. He said this was the on­ly ex­tent to which the school re­open­ing is cur­rent­ly be­ing ex­plored. 
"At this point in time, we're not en­ter­tain­ing the con­ver­sa­tion about tod­dlers and who go­ing to wear a mask. That's just wast­ing time. We not there," he said. 
"We're not down in the pri­ma­ry school yet. We'll deal with that when we get there."
The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is ex­pect­ed to roll out a vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve next week for chil­dren be­tween the ages of 12 and 18 with the as­sis­tance of the Min­istry of Health. 
Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said it was op­ti­mal that all of the stu­dents ex­pect­ed to re­turn to school be vac­ci­nat­ed. 
"We want the ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion to be vac­ci­nat­ed be­cause of the way chil­dren in­ter­act there's a high­er risk and be­cause of the en­vi­ron­ment it­self, there's a high­er risk of spread from one per­son to the next," he said.
"So as many peo­ple that could be vac­ci­nat­ed in that age group, the bet­ter the out­come will be in terms of spread if and when we re­turn to that en­vi­ron­ment."
The stu­dents will be vac­ci­nat­ed from Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech dos­es do­nat­ed to T&T from the Unit­ed States this week. It is the on­ly World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO)-ap­proved vac­cine that has been cleared by the body for use in chil­dren be­tween the ages of 12 and 18. While it is al­so safe for use in adults, the Prime Min­is­ter said these will go to chil­dren due to the rare ap­proval. Sinopharm and Ox­ford-As­traZeneca dos­es are avail­able for the adult pop­u­la­tion.

The Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) and the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) will be al­lowed to re­sume op­er­a­tions along with the re­tail sec­tor on Mon­day. 
The an­nounce­ment came from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day. The re­tail sec­tor re­open­ing was first an­nounced one week ago. How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter said the coun­try was in a po­si­tion now to al­so al­low the san­i­ta­tion groups to re­sume op­er­a­tions. 
"We bring out our clean­ing and cleans­ing staff­—URP and CEPEP. Our roads and high­ways and by­ways are now be­com­ing over­grown, over­run. Be­cause they work­ing out­doors, it is the view they can come out now, join the work­force out­side and do the work that they do (while) main­tain­ing strict pro­to­cols at all times," he said.
He stressed that the pub­lic health pro­to­cols must be main­tained and asked that the or­gan­is­ers spread the work­ers out to avoid con­gre­ga­tion. 
"It can be done safe­ly and it should be done safe­ly be­cause we are now ac­knowl­edg­ing loud­ly and proud­ly that we are liv­ing with the virus but do­ing cer­tain things not to al­low the virus to get the bet­ter of us," he said.
He said per­son­al ser­vices such as bar­bers, hair sa­lons and spas will be al­lowed to re­sume op­er­a­tions next Mon­day, Au­gust 23. He asked that work­ers in these sec­tors con­tin­ue mak­ing ef­forts to get vac­ci­nat­ed be­fore it re­opens.
The re­open­ing of the re­tail sec­tor is a ma­jor step for the coun­try. How­ev­er, busi­ness heads have lament­ed the un­cer­tain­ty of do­ing busi­ness dur­ing the pan­dem­ic with lock­downs al­ways loom­ing. 
Asked by Guardian Me­dia if he could give any as­sur­ances that an­oth­er lock­down would not soon fol­low any ma­jor spikes in cas­es, Dr Row­ley said: "I can't give you any as­sur­ance. This is some­thing that is be­yond as­sur­ance."
He said the Gov­ern­ment was hop­ing pro­to­cols would be ad­hered to and that there will not be any surges in cas­es, but if there is, he said, "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

Nurs­ing as­sis­tant Jenelle Elie hopes to get more nurs­es and mem­bers of the pub­lic to take their COVID-19 vac­cine by ap­peal­ing to them.

Eight more peo­ple have lost their lives to COVID-19, while an­oth­er 129 peo­ple have test­ed pos­i­tive for the dis­ease, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health.

All Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) booths and Lot­to Cen­tres will re­open from Mon­day.

The Min­istry of Health is re­mind­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic that start­ing to­day, Sun­day 8th Au­gust 2021, they can make ap­point­ments for the up­com­ing roll-out of first dos­es of the As­traZeneca COVID-19 vac­cine us­ing ei­ther the on­line or tele­phone hot­line ap­point­ment sys­tems.

In the past week, T&T ad­min­is­tered on­ly 4,500 dos­es of vac­cines and not the 10,000 to 15,000 ex­pect­ed.