By Prior Beharry
AT just around 2.30 pm on February 17, 2021, Keisha Prevatt-Gomez, a nurse at the Infection, Prevention and Control Department of the Caura Hospital, became the first person in Trinidad and Tobago to receive a Covid-19 vaccine.
She was administered it by the Manager of the Expanded Immunization Programme in the Ministry of Health Grace Sookchand.
The ceremony took place at the Couva Hospital and Multi-Training Facility on Wednesday.
T&T has received from Barbados 2,000 of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. They were given to Barbados by India.
Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh said this first batch will be used to vaccinate 1,000 high-risk healthcare workers since it was a two-dose jab.
He said he will take his vaccine from the 120,000 expected to be received from the COVAX facility next month.
The second person to get the vaccine was Dr Don Martin the Medical Chief of Staff at the Couva facility.
And as the first set of vaccines were being distributed, the Ministry of Health in its Wednesday afternoon update reported seven new Covid-19 cases from samples taken during February 14 to 16.
Deyalsingh said at the virtual presser hours before the jabs were given to healthcare workers that T&T’s seven-day rolling average was down to six cases.
Watch video below as Nurse Prevatt-Gomez is the first to get Covid-19 vaccine in T&T:
