(Trinidad Express) – Enough vaccines have been procured by Trinidad and Tobago that the country may be able to achieve herd immunity and return to some semblance of normalcy by September of this year.
And the hope is that the school population can return to the classroom when the new school year begins then.
There is also an effort to accelerate the return to work of people so the country can begin its economic recovery.
Among those being targeted for vaccination are construction workers, people in manufacturing, supermarket workers, food and beverage workers (including roadside vendors), pharmacists, and private security officers.
The plan, labelled as “Vaccinate And Operate,” will begin rolling out as early as Sunday, with an initial target of 500,000 people being vaccinated.
Mass vaccination sites have been set up.
These were some of the big announcements made yesterday by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley as he delivered an encouraging assessment of where the country stood in its fight to suppress the surge in Covid-19 deaths and cases.
He said that Government was also prepared to reopen the borders to allow round trip Caribbean Airlines (CAL) flights from North America, with conditions on travellers that would be detailed in the coming weeks. He said he looked forward to the day that people did not have to apply for an exemption to come to T&T.
A date for the border reopening was not given but it could happen within four to six weeks, if the country continued to keep its death and infection rates down while the population is vaccinated.
Rowley said that the public health regulations, State of Emergency and curfew had led to a slowing of the Covid case rate, but that it was not time for the country to exhale.
He said that had these actions not been taken, instead of the 25,000 Covid cases in Trinidad and Tobago as of Friday, there would have been as many as 100,000 cases, with a death rate of 100 people a day. He announced that for the month of June, the curfew hours would be adjusted as of today.
He said the curfew would be from 7 pm Friday to 5 am Saturday, from 7 pm Saturday to 5 am Sunday, and from 7 pm Sunday to 5 am Monday.
During the week, the curfew would be enforced from 9 pm as before.
He said it was the “end of the beginning” and not the “beginning of the end”.
Rowley said a shipment of more than 100,000 of the two-shot Sinopharm vaccine was due to arrive in the country next week, and Trinidad was also expecting its last tranche of AstraZeneca vaccines through the COVAX platform.
But the game changer was that government had also made a payment unto the Africa Medical Supplies Platfrom, which has put the country in the position to get 800,000 doses of the one-shot Johnson and Johnson vaccine. He said it was anticipated, if all went to plan, that the J&J vaccine would arrive in T&T in August.
He said the plan was to vaccinate one million people in T&T out of a population of 1.4 million and by September, two thirds of the population would have been vaccinated, it all went well.
