CMO: Still too many people unvaccinated to drive infections down

3261624

[email protected]

Roughly one in two adults in Trinidad and Tobago have got a shot of COVID-19 vaccinations.

Despite over 400,000 people now fully vaccinated, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Roshan Parasram said yesterday there are still too many immune naive people that can continue to drive infections.

As a guest of Aakash Vani 106.5 FM’s Morning Panchayat show, Parasram said that although there was an average of 200 cases per day, hospital admissions for COVID-19 and deaths are less than the end of June when infection rates were even higher.

He said this was the impact of vaccination, but the rate needs to climb for T&T to experience its full force.

With around 45,000 confirmed infections between March 2020 to present, Parasram says this is a small portion of the population.

It means that there are many more people who are unvaccinated and who the virus can infect.

“So they have not been infected, they have not been vaccinated. Those people are immune naive, and there are still a substantial number of people out there who can be easily affected by the virus, and that is why we need the vaccination rate to go up.”

Addressing concerns about the mortality rate, Parasram explained that T&T has a high prevalence of diabetes, obesity and asthma. According to daily reports from Regional Health Authorities, these are the top three contributors to COVID-19 deaths.

Hypertension, end-stage renal disease and cancer were others causes. Parasram said that one of the reasons why some people are hesitant against the vaccines were because of their diabetic or hypertensive condition. However, he said the Ministry of Health has a campaign to let these people know that they are at-risk groups for severe disease and should get vaccinated.

He said the Ministry looks at the number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths. When the vaccines begin to provide some coverage, the Ministry expects that infections would be milder, leading the fewer hospitalisations and deaths.

“That is what the expectation is, and as I said, we began to see that, I would say, somewhere in the middle of July when large numbers of people came out.”

Parasram said in the initial phase of vaccination before the arrival of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, 1 million of 1.4 million people could have been vaccinated. There are an estimated 306,000-380,000 people between the ages of 12-18 and about 20,000 pregnant women.

In March-May, the supply in Caricom was sporadic, with some vaccines coming from the COVAX Facility and some donations. In mid-July, a large shipment of Sinopharm vaccine led the Ministry to expand its vaccination programme with the help of the private sector.

Parasram said that in any population, vaccination programmes would attract an initial influx of people. After 50 per cent of a population is vaccinated, he noted there is difficulty in getting the remainder to accept the vaccines.

He pointed out that the ministry has to constantly assess its interventions and strategies. Parasram said the arrival of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is ideal for a mass vaccination programme as after one shot, people do not have to return for another, and after two weeks, they are fully immunised.

He said if people accept the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, the number of fully immunised people will increase faster.

“So the adult population, being about a million, we have given out 510,000 doses, which is just about the halfway mark for adults. So in terms of the population, it is broken into different groups. You find that the children will behave very similarly to the adults in the way that the uptake goes. Expectedly, you see the first 50 per cent quite quickly, and then you get a slowdown.”