Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said the country is now ready to take its response to the COVID-19 virus to the next level as the focus shifts from controlling the virus to controlling the virus.
“For the past year, we have been controlling the disease by closing borders, through physical barriers such as masking, social distancing, washing hands, asking people to stay at home when they are sick, and all other public health measures.
Deyalsingh said on Wednesday at the Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 virtual press conference, saying that other management tools used were restricting convergence, closing rivers and streams, and at some point closing most businesses.
“That’s how you manage the disease in a pandemic, but managing the disease is different from what we want to switch to now. We now want to make the transition from controlling the disease – that’s like a war of attrition, today the virus wins, tomorrow I win – to controlling the disease. When we talk about controlling the disease, we now mean that we have some dominion over the COVID-19 virus. “
He said figuratively speaking it means they can tell the virus what to do and where to go.
“How do we do that? You can’t do that with the public health measures, borders are closed, that’s management. To control it now, we have to go to the next phase, which is about vaccinating people. That’s how we do this. virus, and if we can control the virus with a robust vaccination program that we put in place, then life as we know it or as we knew it before February 2020 could return to some degree of normalcy.
“That’s what we want. So grandchildren can cuddle grandparents so you can have a wedding so you can have a birthday party. The social interaction that we have been looking for and have been missing for the past 10 months, we can start to get some more, ”said Deyalsingh.
He noted that they can look positively at the reopening of the last parts of the business world when it comes to nightlife, but that they will have to vaccinate a certain number of people to fight the virus.
“What we start doing from February, March, and in the future is to vaccinate to keep the virus under control so that life can get somewhat normal again. You may still have to wear masks, you should still be social, wash your hands, but what I’d like to see come out of this… no more deaths. No more hospital admissions, no more people in intensive care. We would like to see more and more children go to school. So those are the victories we would like to have.
According to the World Health Organization timetable, the health minister said that Trinidad and Tobago expects to receive their first quota of vaccines either in late February or early March.
“We have made all preparations to start the vaccination journey. Once the vaccines are physically in Trinidad and Tobago, we expect the rollout to begin three to five business days after receiving the vaccines.
He said the 3-5 days will allow them to store the vaccines and do all the necessary paperwork before sending it to the regional health authorities (RHAs) and to Tobago to initially have a nationally coordinated response where they are starting. to vaccinate primary health workers.
“We will dedicate the first week of the program only to frontline health workers who are most at risk of exposure, such as those in COVID hospitals, those in the accident and emergency departments, and the district health facilities.
“They’re getting what we’re concerned about because they’re our most cherished and most vulnerable population.”
Deyalsingh stated that the RHAs are responsible for vaccinating their primary care health workers initially, Deyalsingh said the ministry has already asked the RHAs to provide the names of those workers, who will then be given an appointment to receive the vaccine.
“Then we will start rolling out to the non-communicable disease clinics, the essential workers and so on.”