PM: Trinidad and Tobago to get more covid19 vaccines soon

Trinidad and Tobasgo's covid19 vaccine supplies continue to gradually increase, with the country expected to receive another gift from the St Vincent and the Grenadines and more doses from China, the Prime Minister announced on Saturday. The vaccines are ever more important as the delta variant of the virus is causing spikes in many countries, he noted.

During a press conference at the Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s on Saturday, he said TT would receive 4,000 vaccines from St Vincent which that country could not use before they expired “in a few days,” but TT had the infrastructure to do so.

Also, a shipment of about 300,000 doses of Sinopharm bought from China should arrive in the country in early July, TT’s last shipment of vaccines from the Covax facility was due in mid-July, and the 800,000 doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine from the Africa Medical Supplies Platform should arrive in August.

Addressing the issue of the US government’s global donation drive of 80 million vaccines, Dr Rowley said a lot of progress had been made over the past seven-ten days.

“We have been in very positive contact, discussions, work, with the US with respect to the commitment to supply vaccines to Latin America and the Caribbean. We are at the stage now we are confident the Caribbean has been separated from the others. We have had some documentation in place and we expect that in the very near future that those discussions will be concluded and the logistics and movement will start.”

Honduras is expected to receive 1.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine on Sunday, becoming the first country in Latin America and the Caribbean to receive covid19 vaccines from the US.

Dr Rowley said there was a possibility of people needing booster shots at some point with the rise of variants of concern around the world, especially the delta variant which originated in India.

Reports stated that, as of June 22, the delta variant was in 85 countries around the world and spreading quickly. It is now the dominant strain in the UK and is fast becoming the dominant strain in the US. Some experts attributed a covid19 outbreak in the highly vaccinated Israeli population to the Delta variant, with it linked to approximately 90 per cent of new cases. It has also spread quickly in Australia and Vietnam.

Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram said some studies reported it was not only more transmissible, but believed to be more severe. Therefore, it could cause more hospitalisation, a greater need for oxygen, a greater need for intensive care, and is more deadly.

“When you put it in terms of R0, which is the number of persons a virus can spread to, the original Wuhan lineage would have been able to spread (from) one person to 2.3 people. The alpha (UK) variant, possibly the P1 (Brazil) variant, going one person to five persons. The delta variant can go anywhere between one person transmitting up to eight persons.”

Highlighting TT’s vaccination process, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said TT was on target to reach the goal of 188,900 people receiving both their shots by July 31. He stressed that TT’s current vaccination goals were based on the amount of vaccines available.

So far, 197,705 people have had their first dose, and 68,944 a second.

He added that both Indian and Chinese nationals were vaccinated from the gifts of vaccines given by their countries. TT received 40,000 AstraZeneca vaccines from India on April 13, and 100,000 doses of Sinopharm as a gift from China arrived on May 18.

“A similar request was made when we got the gift of 100,000. His excellency the Ambassador to China made a similar request and as we did it for the Indian gift, we did it for the Chinese gift.”

Also at the press conference, medical experts said the country’s covid19 trends continued with a slow but consistent decline over the past week.

Epidemiologist Dr Avery Hinds said for the weeks of May 23 -9 and May 30-une 5, there was a ten per cent drop in  positivity rates. There was a 30 per cent drop in the week of June 6-2, and a six per cent drop in the week of June 13-19.

Principal medical officer Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards said there was a decrease in the number of people admitted to the nine hospitals and the other seven facilities in the parallel health care system.

She added that the current occupancy rate of 51 per cent was the lowest since May 1.

Saturday’s 4 pm covid19 update said 386 peoplewere in hospital, 142 in step-down facilities, 345 in state quarantine facilities, and 6,772 in home isolation.

Nine people died of covid19-related illness over the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of deaths to 800.

It also reported 294 new covid19 cases from samples taken from June 22-25, bringing the total number of active cases to 7,594 and the total cases since the start of the pandemic to 32,069. There were 73,675 recovered cases.

“What I’d like to reiterate to the population is that although we are seeing a declining number in persons seeking care, unfortunately we continue to see there being more critically ill patients, that is, those in the hospitals, versus those in step-down facilities.”

Caura Hospital thoracic medical director Dr Michelle Trotman added that people who had received a first dose of covid19 vaccines but not their second had died or been admitted to hospital.

She reiterated that a person is not fully vaccinated until two weeks after receiving their second shot.