T&T will be receiving 75,000 doses of Pfizer next week as the current doses will expire by Monday said Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh.
The 260,000 Pfizer doses that the Government has now will be destroyed.
“The number of vaccines which we will have to destroy is 260,000 as I indicated. We will incinerate…that is the method of destruction. It will not go to a public dump, it will be a process of incineration.”
Deyalsingh spoke on Saturday at the Ministry of Health’s virtual media conference.
“As you know, the Pfizer vaccines that we currently have in stock will be expiring on Monday 28th February. We expect our first tranch of 75,000 sometime next week. We had a meeting with the authorities on Thursday and it is going to come in next week. So from Tuesday 1st of March, we will temporarily suspend our Pfizer vaccination programme. We will be pulling stock back from the system, from around lunchtime on Monday.”
He said the suspension of the Pfizer vaccination programme will only be for “just a couple of days” until the new shipment arrives.
Deyalsingh added that the booster programme will continue as nationals can be boosted with any vaccine such as Sinopharm or Johnson and Johnson.
He also gave the number of vaccines (first and second doses, additional primary doses and booster) by the brand that has been given out in the country.
*897,805 doses of Sinopharm
*241,167 doses of AstraZeneca
*328,444 doses of Pfizer
*56,339 doses of Johnson and Johnson
He also said that T&T cannot set up a vaccine manufacturing plant because of its size. “Small countries like us typically do not have that capacity.”
