Deyalsingh: Teachers to get covid19 vaccine as essential workers

HEALTH Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said on Wednesday that teachers will be deemed essential workers and be among the first to get the covid19 vaccine in late February/early March.

He was addressing a briefing at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s.

Also present were the Prime Minister, Minister of National Security Stuart Young, Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram and other health officials.

Deyalsingh said inoculating teachers was important because secondary schools will be partially reopening next Monday, to facilitate practical work like science labs among forms four to six.

He said the first batch of 100,000-120,000 vaccines from Oxford-AstraZeneca would inoculate about 50,000 people. This would start with some 17,000 health-sector workers, especially those most exposed, such as at accident and emergency units, wards and clinics. Non-communicable disease (NCD) clients attending clinic would also be offered it, Deyalsingh said, and then residents of old people's homes, once medical and legal requirements were met.

Essential workers such as police officers and soldiers, sanitation workers and teachers will be next, he said.

To stop new strains of covid19 taking root in TT, he said as many people as possible should be vaccinated in the shortest period.

The Prime Minister said on top of the first allocation through Covax, he also hoped TT could benefit from some 226,000 vaccines for Caricom from the African Union.

Epidemiologist Dr Avery Hinds said after a steady rise in covid19 cases up to mid-January following Christmas, daily infections fell to a current daily average of 12-13.

Dr Michelle Trotman of Caura Hospital said people must still sanitise, distance and mask even as TT moves towards a vaccine. When vaccination takes root, a particular number of people must be vaccinated to take TT into a relatively safe zone, she added.

Prof Christine Carrington, UWI professor of molecular genetics and virology, said the UK variant is 50 per cent more transmissible than the original strain, while South African and Brazilian variants were less easily neutralised by the body’s immune response.

Deyalsingh said the world has had 104 million cases of covid19, including two million deaths.

Dr Rowley said TT was now in “a fairly good place,, having heeded his past advice to be careful of virus spread over Christmas. While last August, the number of covid19 cases in TT were doubling every seven days, now this period had been stretched to 92 days.

The PM said the return of pupils to school next Monday is the result of a managed response to the virus. But he warned that it doesn’t take much to swing back the pendulum to a worst-case scenario of infections.

The reopening of schools will be monitored closely on a daily basis, with eyes wide open and being aware TT was taking a risk, Rowley said.

Deyalsingh said next Monday some 51,000 pupils would return to school and he hoped the population understood the level of risk being taken on. He urged children to not take home the virus to their parents. He reiterated that minors will not be vaccinated owing to a lack of trial data.

Rowley said TT is getting a small number of vaccines from the Covax facility, being in a very long line of countries seeking vaccines, but is also doing a lot to get additional doses, for instance via Caricom’s approach to the African Union, plus talking directly to manufacturers like AstraZeneca.

Parasram hoped the population would be encouraged by the 76 per cent success rate of this latter vaccine.

Asked about calls to celebrate Carnival, he said that like oil and water, Carnival and covid19 do not mix.

Warning that Carnival involves one third of the population congregating closely, Rowley alluded to viral spread under these conditions, saying, “We don’t want to be a participant in a ‘carnival of coffins.’”