By Sue-Ann Wayow
THE batch of donated paediatric formula of the Pfizer vaccine should expire later in the year, allowing for more time for children to become vaccinated.
Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh on Wednesday maintained that while a date has not yet been set for the arrival of the 40,000 doses from Spain, the government was working to get all the legal documents in order at the soonest possible time.
He was speaking at the Ministry of Health’s virtual Covid-19 update on Wednesday – the last one to be held before the full reopening of all schools on Tuesday.
In reminding the public of his statements two weeks ago, Deyalsingh said, “We had sent the draft donation agreement to the Office of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs for positive vetting. That agreement has been positively vetted and is in the process of being signed by both parties. Spain has already signed off, we will be signing off either today or tomorrow.
“In conjunction with that, we are also working on the indemnification agreement which is a legal document that is being worked out in tandem, we are not doing it sequentially to save time and also at the same time, we have also started to work on the logistics to bring the vaccines in.”
“We still don’t have a firm date,” he said.
The minister added, “We have been informed that this batch of 40,000 that we will be getting will be expiring later down in the year, sometime in October or November and if that is true, we are grateful, it gives us a little more time to use out that 40,000 for the population five to 11.”
Also on the issue of vaccines, Deyalsingh said that 55, 423 persons ages 12 to 18 were fully vaccinated out of an average of 90,000.
“That is not a bad place to be,” he said.
Booster hesitancy
And Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram said it appeared as though there may be some booster hesitancy since only almost 150,000 persons have received a booster shot out of more than 710,000 who were considered fully vaccinated.
In doing his calculations, Deyalsingh said the 12 to 18 age group did not fall in the “boostable population” and therefore 654, 917 persons were eligible for a booster shot.
This means that 22.6% of the population that could be boosted have received their additional dose, he said.
Dr Parasram encouraged all those eligible to acquire a third shot especially as the Covid-19 variants of Delta and Omicron and their sublineages were still present in the population.
