NCRHA CEO Davlin Thomas on Friday told Newsday he was pleased with the many volunteers stepping forward to help administer jabs at the site for mass vaccination against covid19. He said this volunteer initiative was being handled by the Ministry of Health, for the benefit of the RHAs.

"We have a rich number of volunteers although the call came from the ministry. They are managing that side of the equation.

"We do have currently a number of volunteers. We also have a number of organisations to provide clerical assistance, data entry and so on. That's ongoing."

Thomas was also pleased with vaccinations administered.

"On the other side of it, the vaccination side is enormous.

"At one site, UTT campus on Monroe Road, we had almost 1,600. It's really moving. You have a mixed group of people coming

"Today we did food and beverage predominantly but it was co-mingled with a number of other people we've been targeting. These were front-line workers, people who serve people. We want to target them first. We have ministries and in particular we would have targeted persons with NCDs who are younger but still vulnerable."

Thomas said the NCRHA was also targeting churches, temples and mosques, utilising linkages already made in a programme pre-covid of full medicals for members of congregations.

"It takes 15-30 minutes to go through the system, when people stick to the appointments

"There's a growing tendency of people with appointments in the afternoon to come in the morning and say they want to wait

"This is strange given you only spend 20 minutes when you come."

He said vaccines were given by appointment, not by walk-in.

"Basically the flows are high."

"So far we'd have done about 88,000. In the next week or so it should be 8,000-10,000, and moving forward

"We are looking at a daily throughput of 1,500-2,000 at the mass vaccination site and 100-150 per day at the health centres simultaneously.

"It's going pretty steady."

Thomas saluted his staff at the NCRHA.

"The staff of the NCRHA, I really hope you mention them. They've been trudging through this with a particular level of preponderance and patience and we need to recognise them."

Asked any other thoughts, he said, "Just to encourage people to vaccinate. Covid worldwide is a monster. The only way of killing that is by vaccination."

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