Barbados expects 100, 000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses this week

Barbados is in line to receive 100, 000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine later this week and several of the island’s top medical professionals are fully on board with the move to vaccinate the population.

Public Health Specialist and National Co-Coordinator of the National COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign Dr Elizabeth Ferdinand told a press conference this evening: “We are getting an AstraZeneca vaccine and we are supposed to be getting a 100, 000 doses.”

She insisted that the vaccine, which has already been rolled out in some of the world’s largest countries, is “safe and suitable”.

“We are not doing [vaccinating] people under 18 … but as far as race, ethnicity or sex … it is safe for anybody.”

She however added that the vaccine will not be administered to people who are allergic to its components or people who have severe allergies, including those who use an EpiPen – a medical device used in emergencies to treat very severe allergic reactions.

Ferdinand, who is working with Major David Clarke of the Barbados Defence Force, is currently finalising arrangements for the vaccine rollout.

She announced that teams will be headed by senior health sisters.

“We are hoping to have about 30 teams, each team has about eight or nine people in it operating out of the nine polyclinics.”

Meanwhile, Clinical Pharmacologist at the University of the West Indies and Chairman of the Barbados Drug Formulary Committee Dr Kenneth Connell endorsed the vaccination programme, saying the vaccine not only seeks to destroy the virus from moving and attaching to cells, but there is early evidence that the AstraZeneca Vaccine may reduce transmission of the viral illness.

He said: “The Astra Zeneca vaccine is an opportunity for a population that is vaccinated to one, reduce the likelihood that they will become very ill, or die from the [virus], which is the most important right now and secondly, it appears that it also decreases the transmission.

President of the Barbados Association of Medical Practitioners Dr Lynda Williams also reassured that there was no need to fear the vaccine.

She said it was especially critical that vulnerable groups including the elderly are inoculated, stressing that there were no major risks.

“People who have chronic diseases, people who have poorly controlled diabetes, poorly controlled hypertension, the strokes, those are the very people we want to vaccinate, because they are the people at higher risk of getting COVID-19 … they are at higher risk of getting severe illness when they are infected with COVID-19.

“There is no contraindication [from the COVID vaccine] for  those people,” she said.