By Prior Beharry
THE policy for Covid-19 vaccination in Trinidad and Tobago is now expanded to people regardless of age but who are in “high risk” and “high exposer” categories.
This was revealed by Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh at the virtual media conference on Saturday.
The initial policy was to vaccinate high-risk groups such as frontline healthcare workers and persons over 60 years with non-communicable diseases.
Deyalsingh said, “We have now opened it up and made it available. It is a voluntary system.”
The said the vaccination programme was now opened up for any healthcare worker in the public and private sectors.
He said parliamentarians and officials in local government will also be vaccinated because the public will suffer if these bodies were not functioning.
Deyalsingh said members of the judiciary and media were also being vaccinated regardless of age.
“So that was the rationale for doing phase one and phase two because we got more vaccines,” he said.
The Government initially received 2,000 AstraZeneca vaccines as a gift from Barbados. These vaccines were used to inoculate frontline healthcare workers.
T&T then received 33,600 vaccines from the COVAX facility and another 40,000 from the Serum Institute of India.
This two-dose vaccine will be used to vaccine about 37,000 based on high exposure and high risk, Deyalsingh said.
He noted that 29,237 people were already vaccinated and 26 sites including two mass facilities at the paddock of the Queen’s Park Savannah and the Tacarigua Racquet Centre were opened to facilitate the process.
Deyalsingh said 2,932 and 4,295 people were vaccinated on Thursday and Friday respectfully.
He called on people to only get vaccinated at State sanctioned facilities at this time due to reports of counterfeit or unauthorised vaccines in Latin America.
See related stories:
Indian High Commissioner Thanks PM, Kamla On Arrival of 40,000 Covid-19 Vaccines
