33,000 doses of covid19 vaccines coming

A shipment of 33,000 covid19 vaccine doses is now expected to reach Trinidad and Tobago by the end of March, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said during a press conference on Monday.

The shipment is part of 100,800 vaccines secured through the Covax facility.

“We are now waiting on our first tranche of 33,000, which we are guaranteed at this stage,” Deyalsingh said. “The rest of the vaccines will follow between March and May.”

Deyalsingh said government had gone through all the requirements, including signing off on the Covax agreement, indemnification, getting a quotation and, most importantly, paying.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) gave government a quotation for the 33,000 vaccines, which cost US$148,084.06.

“That money left on Friday. It has gone to Central Bank and between today and tomorrow it will go to PAHO.”

Deyalsingh said government decided to take part of the shipment, given the uncertainty in acquiring covid19 vaccines worldwide.

He said the supply of the vaccine is being outpaced by demand.

“We decided to take this route because you never can tell what could happen and an entire shipment could be delayed. We are simply not in complete control of the supply of vaccines.”

Deyalsingh added that because TT’s infection rates are so low, that could also add to the difficulty in securing vaccines.

Answering questions at the press briefing, Deyalsingh said the 33,000 vaccines would be enough to inoculate all health-sector workers, but a decision still had to be made as to how rigorously the vaccination roll-out would be done.

“We will sit down with PAHO and once we know for a fact when the other 67,000 doses are coming, we can take a decision to go full steam ahead and use all 33,000.”

Government is also in bilateral talks with Sinopharm, whose dossier on phase three trials of its vaccine is currently before the World Health Organization (WHO). Talks also continue with the Serum Institute and Bharat Biotech of India for the Covaxin vaccine, and talks continue with the African Medical Supply Platform (AMSP) for vaccines on multiple platforms including AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson.

Deyalsingh said TT was at first able to get 226,000 vaccines from the AMSP, but that figure was raised to 446,000 across the three platforms.

Deyalsingh said TT’s stance remains that it will only import vaccines approved by WHO, but noted that approval from other countries adds credibility to the vaccines being produced. Last week Canada approved the vaccine produced by Johnson and Johnson.