[UPDATED] Deyalsingh: Johnson & Johnson vaccines for coastal, inland villages

The first tranche of the single dose Johnson & Johnson covid19 vaccine, Janssen, will go out to remote coastal and inland villages in Trinidad and Tobago.

On Saturday, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh announced that the 108,000 vaccines that arrived in TT on August 20 would go out to these communities via mobile units.

“There are many areas and pockets of communities in the coastal areas, even inland, that want to be vaccinated but don’t have the wherewithal to be transported twice to a mass vaccination site or even go to a health centre.”

The areas will include Blanchisseuse, Las Cuevas, Matelot, and Sans Souci on the north coast, Kernaham and Guayaguayare on the east coast, Moruga, Cedros, and Los Iros in the south, and Parlatuvier, Charlotteville, and Speyside in Tobago.

He added that inland communities would include Bangladesh in St Joseph, the Marabella Train Line, and Valencia. Although the minister identified these latter areas as "inland", they are located in fairly populous districts with access to health facilities such as the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, the Marabella and Valencia health centres.

“The community will be primed a couple days before via their MPs, their councillors, the RHAs (regional health authorities), mic-ing, messaging, so on, giving you the information.

“And then when these mobile units come in, you have an opportunity to liaise one-on-one with health care professionals, to answer your questions about vaccines in general, but in specific terms, to the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. And hopefully we encourage you in these areas to be vaccinated.”

He said the ministry did not have the exact number of people in the various communities and so was not sure if the 108,000 would be enough or too much. But said he would love it if all the vaccines were to finish in one week.

“We are going on an aggressive drive because we don’t know the exact number in Bangladesh. I mean you could go into the EBC (Elections and Boundaries Commission) figures by polling division and get some sort of clue. So whilst we do all that, we are going to go into these communities regardless. EBC figures will give you some idea but we are not going to wait to crunch those figures. We have prioritised these areas for 100,000.”

Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram explained that the side effects of Janssen were fatigue, pain at the injection site, and headaches. Rare, adverse effects, about nine cases per million, were thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome – blood clots with low platelet levels – and the disorder, Guillain-Barré syndrome, which affected the nerves.

He said it is 66.9 per cent effective against symptomatic disease, 76.7 per cent effective against severe disease after 14 days, 85.4 per cent effective against severe disease after 28 days, and 93.1 per cent effective against hospitalisation after 14 days, and close to 100 per cent after 28 days.

Against the South African or beta variant the vaccine was 64 per cent effective against moderate to critical disease, and 81.7 per cent against severe or critical disease. Against the Brazilian or P1 variant, the dominant strain in TT, it was 68.1 per cent effective against moderate to critical disease, and 87.6 per cent against critical disease.

Parasram said against the delta variant, according to the Johnson & Johnson company, Janssen showed “good antibody neutralising response possibly surpassing” the efficacy rates of other two variants.

On the alpha or UK variant he said data was sparse as not enough of the brand was used in areas where the variant was present.

With respect to the Pfizer vaccine roll out in children 12-18, Deyalsingh said 10,759 got their first shot between Wednesday and Friday at 19 vaccination sites throughout Trinidad. The sites included four in the north, five in the east, three in central, seven in south, and he hoped to have another in Debe next week.

Parasram added that, according to an unofficial report, so far one child had an allergic reaction to the vaccine.

Deyalsingh said the ministry would be reaching out to organisations that represent those who were challenged in some way for its members to be vaccinated.

“We had reached out to person with autism, down syndrome, the physically handicapped, the visually impaired, the deaf and so on. We will be doing a similar thing now that we have the Pfizer vaccines for 12 -18.”

He asked that the organisations also contact the ministry and RHAs so that times would be blocked out for their appointments.

In addition, as of Friday, 479,626 people received the first shot of a World Health Organization-approved vaccine and 364,599 had a second dose.