Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said the promised Sinopharm vaccines from China will be shipped next week. This followed the approval of the vaccine by the World Health Organisation on Friday.

He said these vaccines were promised after the Prime Minister spoke with the Chinese President earlier this year.

'It's the same vaccine that the Prime Minister would have had talks with his counterpart in China on March 16, so the gift of the 100,000 doses will be on its way from early next week. All the preparations we had in place have now swung into action today, once we got approval, Cabinet note signed, letter of commitment signed, everything gone off to the Chinese Embassy, everything. The Ministry of Health is now working with the Chinese Embassy and the officials there to operationalise the plans which have been there for weeks now.'

Deyalsingh said outside of these doses, the ministry is in talks to purchase vaccines on a commercial level in the order of 100's of 1,000's.

CMO Dr Roshan Parasram said Sinopharm is an inactivated vaccine, similar to the flu and polio vaccines.

'It's an older platform than the mRNA type platform and has been used for many years. It's a two-dose vaccine and can be stored at two to eight degrees Celsius. The second dose is given at an interval of 21 to 28 days, and WHO has given it an efficacy of 78.1 per cent in preventing severe diseases, in ages 18 and above. It is authorised for use in 45 countries across the world and 65 million doses of this vaccine have been given so far, which is one of the most widely used vaccines in the world. It has good safety and efficacy profiles.

'The shorter period of time between dose 1 and dose 2 is good, meaning that you can have fully vaccinated people much quicker in a population rather than having to wait eight to 12 weeks with the AstraZeneca vaccine and the storage temperature is again very good as that is what we're accustomed to dealing with all our supply chains in TT.'

He said people were confusing the Sinopharm vaccine with the Sinovac vaccine in use in Brazil, which had a lower efficacy.

The Prime Minister expanded on some of the efforts the government has put in place to acquire vaccines.

'As part of the Covax mechanism, we were supposed to get 100,000 vaccines in the first pass, we got 33,600 the other day and we are gladly going to receive 33,600 on Monday and then we'll only be two-thirds along the way of the first expected tranche. As soon as Pfizer got the approval, we and the rest of the world were knocking on their door with our cheque in hand, up to today Pfizer is saying we can't sell you any vaccines. Moderna was only approved for use in the country it was made in, meaning that those who were not in that country could not access it.'

Rowley said the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine being manufactured in India, from which TT got a donation, was not now even supplying India. He said the African Medical Supplies platform still had not received the vaccines it was hoping for, of which TT was to get a portion. H

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