Pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tions could try to bring in COVID-19 vac­cines once they meet all the re­quire­ments of the Min­istry of Health.

The ques­tion arose af­ter the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty was able to se­cure some 80 vials of Pfiz­er vac­cines through a pri­vate arrange­ment with af­fil­i­ates in the Unit­ed States.

"I have said be­fore that vac­cines com­ing in­to this coun­try, brought by the pri­vate sec­tor, any pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ty want­i­ng to do that would fall un­der the law and re­quire­ments to bring med­ica­tion in­to the coun­try," Row­ley said.

"Any­body in the pri­vate sec­tor can get vac­cines the same way that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty de­part­ment had to jus­ti­fy to the Min­istry of Health all the da­ta as to where it came from, what au­tho­ri­sa­tion it has to en­ter the coun­try, the same thing will ap­ply to the pri­vate sec­tor if they get the vac­cine."

Row­ley said that the Pfiz­er vac­cines did not re­ceive any spe­cial treat­ment be­cause it was com­ing to a gov­ern­ment min­istry.

"They were sub­ject­ed to the ex­treme strin­gency of an­swer­ing all the ques­tions," he said.

Row­ley said he was not open to al­low­ing vac­cines in the coun­try if he could not vouch for its ori­gin, ef­fi­ca­cy and con­tent.

"We have news and in­for­ma­tion of peo­ple re­ceiv­ing in vials, so-called vac­cines which turned out to be any­thing else but vac­cines, salt­wa­ter and oth­er­wise," he said.

'Ju­ly should see speed­ing up of peo­ple vac­ci­nat­ed'

Speak­ing at Sat­ur­day's COVID-19 brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, Row­ley al­so said that T&T will get an­oth­er 4,000 vac­cines from St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, but with a short ex­piry date, that batch will be used for peo­ple re­ceiv­ing sec­ond dos­es.

The PM said that T&T is al­so "close to con­firm­ing" an­oth­er batch of Sinopharm vac­cines from Chi­na.

"It should be here in the ear­ly part of Ju­ly and ap­prox­i­mat­ing up­wards of 200,000 dos­es."
He said we al­so have con­fir­ma­tion of a ship­ment from CO­V­AX "which would be our last CO­V­AX-com­mit­ted ship­ment to take us to the 100,000 dos­es that we have been al­lo­cat­ed." These are due in mid-Ju­ly.

"Dur­ing the month of Ju­ly, even as we are ap­ply­ing our sec­ond dos­es to all those per­sons who got their first dos­es, we will al­so ex­pect to re­ceive two sources of vac­cines to con­tin­ue the first-dose pro­gramme," he said.

"It is quite pos­si­ble that for a week or so we may not have vac­cines for a first dose but cer­tain­ly by the sec­ond week in Ju­ly all things be­ing equal, we should have vac­cines in hand to con­tin­ue the first dose."

The PM said he still ex­pect­ed to be able to com­plete a "ma­jor" first-dose vac­cine roll­out and hold the equal num­ber for sec­ond-dose shots.

"Ju­ly should see a speed­ing up of the num­ber of per­sons ac­tu­al­ly vac­ci­nat­ed," he said.

Row­ley said that at the end of Ju­ly he was al­so ex­pect­ing a ship­ment of vac­cines from the African Med­ical Sup­plies Plat­form and said the Gov­ern­ment was al­so in ac­tive talks with the US over its do­na­tion of vac­cines.

The US has promised some 500 mil­lion dos­es of vac­cines to the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty. T&T, as a self-fi­nanc­ing mem­ber, does not qual­i­fy for a share of that tranche. How­ev­er, there have been on­go­ing dis­cus­sions be­tween T&T and the US to by­pass the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty and utilise the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) in­stead.

"We have been in very pos­i­tive con­tact, dis­cus­sions, work with the Unit­ed States with re­spect to the com­mit­ment to sup­ply Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean," he said.

"We are con­fi­dent now that we are at the stage where the Caribbean has been sep­a­rat­ed from the oth­ers and we have had some doc­u­men­ta­tion in place and we ex­pect that in the very near fu­ture that those dis­cus­sions would be con­clud­ed and the lo­gis­tics would start."

Row­ley said that the fig­ures could be re­vealed "with­in days."

There is al­so an of­fer of vac­cines from Mex­i­co, a batch of As­traZeneca man­u­fac­tured joint­ly by Mex­i­co and Ar­genti­na, but Row­ley said he had no con­fir­ma­tion yet of when or how many vac­cines were promised.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that low­er and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries re­ceive less than one per cent of the vac­cines pro­duced.

Deyals­ingh: Goal of 188,900 vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple by end of Ju­ly still on track

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said that the goal of 188,900 vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple by the end of Ju­ly is still on track.

"By and large, we are on tar­get to achieve our first goal, which is pred­i­cat­ed on the num­ber of vac­cines we have now," Deyals­ingh said.

"When you are called for your sec­ond dose please avail your­self to take the sec­ond dose."

9 deaths, 294 new pos­i­tive cas­es

T&T record­ed nine deaths and 294 new pos­i­tive cas­es due to COVID-19 yes­ter­day. This brings the death toll to 800, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health’s up­date.

The to­tal pos­i­tive cas­es stand at 32,069, while the to­tal ac­tive pos­i­tive cas­es are 7,594. There are 23,675 re­cov­ered pa­tients, while the to­tal num­ber of pa­tients in the hos­pi­tal are 386. The min­istry stat­ed that 142 pa­tients are in step-down fa­cil­i­ties, 345 pa­tients in state quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties, and 6,772 peo­ple in home self-iso­la­tion.