Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has warned that coun­ter­feit vac­cines are in cir­cu­la­tion across Latin Amer­i­ca and oth­er places fur­ther afield, and he is urg­ing lo­cals to en­sure they on­ly ac­cess au­then­tic COVID-19 vac­cines through the na­tion­al im­mu­ni­sa­tion pro­gramme cur­rent­ly un­der­way by the Min­istry of Health (MOH).

Deyals­ingh was speak­ing at the MOH’s me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day when he warned, “There are coun­ter­feit vac­cines out there. There are unau­tho­rised vac­cines out there.”

He quot­ed from a re­lease in which PA­HO Di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne ad­vised Latin Amer­i­cans not to be duped by peo­ple ad­min­is­ter­ing coun­ter­feit, unau­tho­rised and ex­pired vac­cines out­side of le­gal pro­grammes, as this was dan­ger­ous to their health.

Deyals­ingh said, “We who are run­ning a na­tion­al pro­gramme, when we re­ly on ev­i­dence from our sis­ter in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners like PA­HO, like WHO, like CARPHA, we are pro­tect­ing you the pub­lic from falling prey to unau­tho­rised vac­cines, coun­ter­feit vac­cines, and now the new trend is to take ex­pired vac­cines, repack­ag­ing them and send­ing them to coun­tries that don’t have strong vig­i­lance sys­tems.”

He as­sured cit­i­zens that the Gov­ern­ment would “on­ly bring in au­tho­rised vac­cines and pro­tect you from char­la­tans who seek to prof­it by bring­ing in ei­ther unau­tho­rised vac­cines, fake vac­cines or ex­pired vac­cines which are be­ing repack­aged.”

Ad­mit­ting that pan­dem­ic fa­tigue had set in among the pop­u­la­tion, blind­ing many to the fact that the virus still rages on, the min­is­ter said glob­al fig­ures con­tin­ued to in­crease with over 146 mil­lion cas­es record­ed so far.

Deyals­ingh re­peat­ed calls for peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly those be­tween the 20 to 59 age group, to de­sist from con­gre­gat­ing/lim­ing as this was dri­ving the lat­est surge in cas­es.

He called on them to re­strict their ac­tiv­i­ties to su­per­mar­kets, phar­ma­cies and work. “We don’t need to be lim­ing.”

Pro­vid­ing an up­date on dai­ly vac­ci­na­tion num­bers, Deyals­ingh with 26 sites now op­er­a­tional, a to­tal of 29,237 peo­ple had re­ceived their COVID-19 vac­cine up to 11 am yes­ter­day. By 4 pm, 30,808 peo­ple had been vac­ci­nat­ed.

Ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic to fact check in­for­ma­tion be­fore shar­ing as it could cre­ate trep­i­da­tion among the mass­es, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram en­cour­aged peo­ple to check the source of their in­for­ma­tion; read the en­tire mes­sage first; check to see if the au­thor is an ex­pert and qual­i­fied to speak on the top­ic; en­sure it is not old sto­ries be­ing shared, and al­so check for bi­as­es.

SWRHA team to do full-dis­clo­sure ses­sion with rel­a­tives of Princes Town man who died

Asked if the MOH had re­ceived the re­port re­lat­ing to the death of the 60-year-old Princes Town man who al­leged­ly died days af­ter he re­ceived the As­traZeneca vac­cine, Paras­ram said it was re­ceived from the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) and an ex­ec­u­tive team would meet with the man’s fam­i­ly this week to con­duct a full-dis­clo­sure ses­sion.

He de­nied the coun­try had record­ed any case of vac­cine-in­duced throm­bo­sis as a re­sult of the vac­cine be­ing ad­min­is­tered thus far.

Paras­ram said the coun­try’s bor­ders re­mained closed to al­low the au­thor­i­ties time to vac­ci­nate as many cit­i­zens as pos­si­ble, and al­so en­sure the emerg­ing vari­ants stay out as long as they can.

Pro­fes­sor of Im­munol­o­gy at UWI’s Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences Dr Michele Mon­teil en­dorsed the high ef­fi­ca­cy of vac­cines in­clud­ing the As­traZeneca, Pfiz­er and John­son & John­son against the UK vi­ral strain.

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted while they were not quite as ef­fec­tive against the African strain, it did not mean there was no ef­fi­ca­cy.

Re­gard­ing the Brazil­ian strain of which sev­er­al cas­es were re­cent­ly di­ag­nosed in Trinidad, Mon­teil said, “We are see­ing that the As­traZeneca vac­cine which we are now im­mu­nis­ing with here in T&T, is very ef­fi­ca­cious against that Brazil­ian strain, as is the Pfiz­er BioN­Tech.”

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion as trends show that young peo­ple seem to be more sus­cep­ti­ble to the Brazil­ian vari­ant and how this might af­fect the con­tin­u­a­tion of phys­i­cal school­ing, she said, “If Trinida­di­ans would step up to the plate and get vac­ci­nat­ed so that it stops the spread of the Brazil­ian vari­ant, we will be able to open our schools.

“I think the next few months are crit­i­cal for our pop­u­la­tion and I re­al­ly urge every­one, we want our chil­dren to have a nor­mal ed­u­ca­tion, we want our chil­dren to have nor­mal de­vel­op­ment and that’s not hap­pen­ing now.”

To the adults, she ap­pealed, “Step up to the plate and be vac­ci­nat­ed.”

158 COVID deaths

The coun­try has record­ed one ad­di­tion­al COVID-19 re­lat­ed death which brings the tal­ly to 158.

Mean­while, the MOH has re­port­ed that be­tween 4 pm on Fri­day and 4 pm yes­ter­day, 105 new pos­i­tive cas­es were con­firmed in sam­ples tak­en be­tween April 21 and 23.

The to­tal num­ber of pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es so far record­ed is 9,592, of which 1,305 are to­tal ac­tive pos­i­tive cas­es.

The to­tal re­cov­ered pa­tients yes­ter­day stood at 8,129.

The to­tal num­ber of pa­tients cur­rent­ly hos­pi­talised is 131; while eight peo­ple are in step-down fa­cil­i­ties, with 223 peo­ple at state quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties, and 1,061 peo­ple in home self-iso­la­tion.