Deyalsingh: Pfizer vaccines for teachers, J&J doses rollout at health centres

TT’s vaccination programme is set to expand with Pfizer being offered to teachers and health care workers, as well as pop-up stops in public places where people can get vaccinated.

Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said 503,239, or about 36 per cent of the population, received their first dose of a covid19 vaccine, and 390,380 or 28 per cent were fully vaccinated. Of the fully vaccinated, 1,063 received the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine.

TT bought 108,000 Johnson & Johnson vaccines from the Africa Medical Supplies Platform which arrived in the country on August 20.

Since the uptake was so small, the ministry planned to expand the vaccination drive from mobile units in rural, coastal and inland communities and make the Johnson & Johnson vaccine available at all 109 health centres. It will also have “pop-ups” at construction sites, malls, groceries, markets and other public spaces.

He added that between August 25 and August 27, 86 pregnant women got their first shot of the Pfizer covid19 vaccine. The Health Ministry recommend the use of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for pregnant women past their first trimester on August 18.

Deyalsingh said there were about 17,000 live births in TT every year with 92 to 93 per cent taking place in the public sector.

“So we have started, under (director of women's health) Dr Adesh Sirjusingh, a very robust education campaign at antenatal clinics where we hope to cover 93 per cent of our pregnant population.

“The other seven to eight per cent will be covered by the private sector. Dr Sirjusingh is already working closely with all the private sector ob-gyns (obstetrician-gynaecologists) to inform their patients that they could access the Pfizer vaccines in the mass vaccination sites.”

Of the 305,370 doses of Pfizer vaccines from the US, 22,330 or 25 per cent of the country’s school-aged population, received their first dose. However, he said the rate of vaccination decreased from about 3,000 to less than 1,000 per day.

While both the Sinopharm and J&J vaccines would expire in 2023, the Pfizer vaccines would do so in November, so people had to get their first shot by the end of October at the latest, as the second shot had to be given three to four weeks after the first.

“We will continue to prioritise children, that’s our first priority, but we are now going to open it up to all health care workers, give them another option, and teachers. We’ll see how that goes before we open it up to the general public.”

The Prime Minister said it was only when 900,000 people, around 65 per cent of the population, were fully vaccinated that he would he call the country’s vaccination programme successful. He therefore asked that 400,000 more people go get vaccinated.

He said he expected and was led to believe people would use the vaccines when available, and that children would have been able to return to school in September to be among a vaccinated population.

“We have 108,000 of those (J&J) vaccines in this country. And after it’s been made available with all the anxiety and all the exhortation and all the expectation that if we get vaccines in this country we will vaccinate ourselves under the reasonable arguments of the scientists and the doctors, that we’ll vaccinate ourselves so as to be better off than being unvaccinated. And we’re being told only over 1,000 people, and Tobago had what, 35 people? That is not what we expected when we spoke!”

Being unvaccinated, he said the country was “dangerously exposed” to the delta variant and there was the possibility of TT forming its own variant if the virus continued to spread through the population. The only thing to mitigate both problems was to improve the level of vaccination in the country.

Thoracic care medical specialist Dr Michelle Trotman added that patients at the hospitals were sicker than before, and about 95 per cent of those were unvaccinated. They were usually people over 60 with underlying medical problems, including obesity.

“Unfortunately, some of these patients are not even aware that they have comorbidities. So they feel that they are well until they present themselves to us. And it is when we start the investigation, that we realise that there are underlying comorbidities that these patients were not aware of.”

She encouraged people to pay attention to their health and go to the doctor to get primary health care checks.