By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

FORMER Health Minister Dr Duane Sands says The Bahamas should conduct its own independent investigation into new COVID-19 vaccines.

Sandra Lindsay, a nurse in New York, was the first person in the United States to receive a COVID vaccine yesterday. The US now joins the United Kingdom which started vaccinating its citizens last week.

Dr Sands, speaking to The Tribune from his office yesterday, said there should be a comprehensive look at the vaccines now coming into use.

“I think we need to look at this thing comprehensively,” he said. “First of all, we should all as human beings be astonished at the rapidity and embrace of technology which has resulted in this historic finish, in terms of producing a vaccine. However, that doesn’t mean that we should simply accept the comments being made by the persons making those comments.

“We should not surrender our sovereign responsibility because no one is going to pay attention to the concerns of Bahamian citizens more than Bahamians. This is not to diminish the responsibility of PAHO and WHO, however, The Bahamas has to go through the process of making sure, like every other country, that they have gone line by line and page by page of this data to see whether or not people that look like you and me are represented, to make sure that the adverse effects have been disclosed to the public and that process is more than someone just standing up and saying, ‘you should take this’.”

Dr Sands said every sovereign country needs to look at the options for vaccines to determine whether they are both safe and effective, appropriate for use, given the constraints and realities of the healthcare system and the healthcare demographics that exist in any particular country.

“We get our vaccines now through PAHO,” he explained. “And we have the assurances that we will get a certain quantity of vaccines through PAHO and WHO. Bear in mind that 80,000 vaccines will only be for about 20 percent of the population. WHO and PAHO finds itself currently being underfunded because the United States has withdrawn its financial support and the US is the single largest financial contributor to those agencies.

“We are now desperate for a solution and while based on the preliminary information that is out there, these vaccines that have been released, appear to be safe in the short term we have no long-term data. So, what happens at three months or six months or a year or even five years?”

Asked about which of the vaccines from the Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca pharmaceutical companies would be more suited for The Bahamas, Dr Sands appeared to favour the drug from AstraZeneca.

“I have gone on record as suggesting that there are challenges with storage for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that require minus 70° C and the top-up requirement of dry ice every so many days will be logistically very challenging for us given the archipelagic nature of The Bahamas,” he said. “The AstraZeneca vaccine can be stored at freezing temperatures, but not at minus 70° C like the others. AstraZeneca vaccine looks very promising. The efficacy was around 70 percent, but it seems to be a reasonable candidate.”

The former health minister seemed concerned about the costs of the vaccine and the funding to support it.

“Let’s say that you get 100,000 people to agree to a vaccine and each of those vaccines is $20 (in cost), but then you have the administrative costs with that,” he said. “So that’s about $2 million then the administrative costs and the storage etcetera. Then it goes to $3-$4 million. You are already starting with a health budget which is in a deficit position, where is the money going to come from? This is a very serious issue.

“I am pro-vaccination, but these are the questions we have to ask and these are answers that we have to get answers to because it (funding) isn’t just going to fall out of the sky. It has to be planned and the public should be engaged in this discussion, because there has been so much damage to the confidence of vaccines because of political interference that people are wondering ‘Is this thing really all that it’s cracked up to be?”

Dr Sands said because of the public’s mistrust of the new vaccine, it is imperative that people are educated properly on it.

“Then you have the historic trends about vaccines in black and brown people who bear a disproportionate burden of deaths and illness from COVID,” he continued. “You add to that a massive social media misinformation campaign that says this is about the sterilisation of the brown and black masses. You literally have to walk people through the process, be transparent, be open and demonstrate by example that this is safe, because the anti-vaccination movement for vaccines in general is strong.

“The anti-vaccination movement for COVID is massive. We have to actively work on educating the public. Not strong arming them or threatening them, or forcing them, but providing information in a way that people can understand it.”

Pfizer received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency use of its vaccine due to the rampant outbreak of COVID in the US.

“Understanding these emergency use authorisations are exactly that – emergency use authorisations,” Dr Sands explained. “What it is saying is that based on the information that we have and based on the severity of the threat to the community this vaccine will be allowed to be used for mass vaccination, however, that doesn’t mean that this is the formal approval.”

Dr Sands is also in support of amending the country’s Vaccine Act, which is 160 years old. He said it is toothless and he tried to have it addressed during his tenure as minister of health.