Trinidad and Tobago discards nearly 400,000 covid19 vaccine doses

MINISTER of Health Terrence Deyalsingh has provided data showing a total of 399,689 covid19 vaccine doses of varying brands have been discarded in this country because the public did not make use of them before their expiration dates.

At the Health Ministry's virtual press conference on Wednesday, Deyalsingh listed the number of vaccines remaining from each brand.

There are 246,785 Sinopharm doses expiring in June 2023; 185,925 Johnson & Johnson vaccines expiring between May and July 2023; 38, 670 Pfizer (paediatric) expiring in October; and no Pfizer (adult) or AstraZeneca vaccines.

He then gave figures for the total number of vaccines per brand Trinidad and Tobago had received and how many were used.

In total, he said, TT got 1,189,000 Sinopharm vaccine doses, 918,389 of which were used. This means that 23,826 of these doses were destroyed.

In the case of AstraZeneca, TT got 277,220 and 241,167 were used. This means 36,053 were destroyed.

As for Pfizer (adult), TT got 684,970 and 358,885 were used. A total of 326,085 of these vaccines were destroyed.

Johnson & Johnson – TT got 259,200 and 60,370 were used. So far 12,905 of these have had to be destroyed.

And for Pfizer (paediatric), TT got 43,200 and 3,710 were used. So far 820 have had to be  destroyed.

He said, "(Covid19) vaccine uptake has been consistently low in recent weeks and months.

"So like, for yesterday, there was a total of 75 doses done across 109 health centres."

He said 716,898 people have "completed their vaccine schedule.

"That's 51.2 per cent of the population. We have been stuck at 50 and 51 per cent for the longest while."