Chamber seeking to vaccinate thousands over two months

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The T&T Chamber of Industry and Commerce is aiming to vaccinate several thousand people over a two-month period as part of the effort by the private sector to help this country achieve herd immunity status in the fight against COVID-19.

Speaking about their mass vaccination camp set up at the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA) in Port-of-Spain, Chamber CEO Gabriel Faria yesterday said there has been an uptick in the numbers of people wanting to be vaccinated.

“We are doing our part,” he said.

Following its launch on Monday, Faria said it was interesting, “as people were making appointments but they were not showing up.”

However, he said this was being balanced by the number of walk-ins being accommodated.

Although Monday’s numbers came in around what was catered to, Faria admitted, “More than half of them were walk-ins.”

Once the outfit is fully operational, Faria said their goal is to have about 2,500 people per day for first vaccines.

He said this target was based solely on two factors, with the first being the public’s demand for the vaccine and secondly, the number of vaccines the T&T Chamber will receive from the Ministry of Health.

Faria said, “The private sector has been extremely supportive and we have gotten so much support from persons who have donated their time, products, food items, computers, generators and those who have come out to support this effort.”

He said everyone had recognised the urgent need to ensure as much of the citizenry was vaccinated as possible.

Faria said they were attempting to implement an automated system to reduce the time people would have to spend being screened and said this would greatly aid in increasing the daily numbers being vaccinated and also ensure the process moved faster and smoother.

He stressed that their initial focus had been to ensure members of the business community were vaccinated.

“Based on the feedback from the ministry, we were recognised as a mass vaccination site. However, we are getting general people and we are not turning them away.” — Anna-Lisa Paul