CAMILLE McEACH­NIE

Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus of the In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA) ad­vis­es par­ents to ed­u­cate them­selves about the COVID-19 Pfiz­er vac­cine.

She was re­spond­ing to a ques­tion on vac­ci­nat­ing the na­tion's chil­dren on Au­gust 18th, dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny to bless the IDA's head­quar­ters at the E&M build­ing, Scar­bor­ough.

"In any pan­dem­ic, you have to be able to ed­u­cate, ed­u­cate, ed­u­cate. There is no way to force views up­on peo­ple be­cause then you get in­to hu­man rights dis­cus­sions. I think it is very im­por­tant that we con­tin­ue to ed­u­cate the peo­ple suf­fi­cient­ly, so they can then be moved in­ter­nal­ly and be in­flu­enced by their own thoughts to process fur­ther with their vac­ci­na­tions," she said.

She said par­ents should be com­fort­able about de­cid­ing to vac­ci­nate their chil­dren.

"Par­ents have to get to a place where they de­cide to vac­ci­nate or not vac­cine their chil­dren, but that on­ly comes through ed­u­ca­tion," Dr Tsoiafatt-An­gus said.

Asked what she thinks about manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tions, she replied: "It has to be a per­son­al choice... Ed­u­ca­tion is the way to help peo­ple to get to that point of ac­cep­tance."

Tsoit­fatt-An­gus, a med­ical doc­tor, said at first, she strug­gled with get­ting the COVID vac­cine.

How­ev­er, she re­vealed she took it af­ter ed­u­cat­ing her­self on the mat­ter.

"At one point, I told my­self that the ben­e­fits out­weigh the risk that I see out there," she said.

Chil­dren in Trinidad be­tween the ages of 12-18 years be­gan get­ting their vac­cines on Au­gust 18th. How­ev­er, the vac­ci­na­tion roll­out in To­ba­go has been resched­uled to to­mor­row, Fri­day Ju­ly 19th.

A re­lease from the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness, and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment (DHWFD) ex­plained the de­lay.

"Some of the ac­com­pa­ny­ing ma­te­ri­als for the Pfiz­er vac­cine, such as the saline so­lu­tion and nee­dles, did not ar­rive on the is­land yes­ter­day [Au­gust 17th] as planned. The sched­uled fer­ry sail­ing, on which the ma­te­r­i­al was due to ar­rive, was can­celled yes­ter­day," the re­lease ex­plained.

The vac­cine roll­out is ex­pect­ed to be­gin for chil­dren from Bish­op's High School and Spey­side High School.

Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary and Pen­te­costal Light and Life Foun­da­tion schools' chil­dren are sched­uled for vac­ci­na­tion on Au­gust 20th.

Vac­ci­na­tion con­tin­ues on Mon­day, Au­gust 23rd, at the Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School, Har­mons SDA, and Good­wood High School.