Rush for Pfizer vaccine as demand on the rise

Friday, August 20, 2021

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

WITH demand for COVID-19 vaccinations continuing to climb, National COVID-19 Vaccine Consultative Committee Chairperson Dr Merceline Dahl-Regis said officials are now facing the challenge of meeting it as she appealed for more Bahamians to volunteer to assist with the country’s vaccination programme.

Dr Dahl-Regis spoke to reporters at the Kendal G L Isaacs Gymnasium yesterday as hundreds flocked to the newly opened vaccination site to receive their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

Last week, The Bahamas received its first batch of the Pfizer vaccine from the United States’ government, boosting the nation’s current supply to help defeat the third wave of the pandemic.

According to committee member Barry Rassin, over 400 people were expected to receive their first Pfizer doses yesterday, with more expected to be vaccinated in the days ahead.

However, it is not clear how much of that figure comprised children, as youngsters aged 12 and older are now permitted to take the Pfizer shots once approved by parents.

“Today, we have 484 confirmed appointments,” he said. “Tomorrow (Friday) we have 704 so we always like to start the first day a little slower so we make sure everything is organised and everybody could be processed efficiently, but tomorrow we ramp up to 704 and continue forward like that.”

The public roll-out of the Pfizer jab comes after officials conducted a pilot phase on Monday.

Around 150 people received Pfizer shots in the pilot phase, 45 of whom were children.

Yesterday, Dr Dahl-Regis said the number of people who participated in the pilot phase was higher than expected. She said officials were able to learn several lessons from Monday’s exercise.

“We learnt that you need a very tight appointment system, and you need number assignments because there is a thirst for the Pfizer vaccine,” she said.

“Secondly, we saw groups of individuals and children with large families and so we hope to change our physical set up because it takes longer to do families than it does for individuals, recognising that some people have to return to work. So what you see this morning is we’re trying very hard to keep an appointment system although there are walk-ins and exceptions."

Dr Dahl-Regis also said there is a need for more manpower to help with the booking of vaccine appointments.

“We hope to have volunteers from all agencies come and assist us because we do need more people to help others make their appointments and that’s where we were short today,” she said. “We don’t have the personnel to say you walk up, let me make an appointment before you leave. Right now, we are really compromised in that domain.”

Dr Dahl-Regis said all appointments for the Pfizer vaccine this week have been booked out.

She noted a team will be in Grand Bahama today to work on vaccine logistics ahead of the vaccine’s arrival, and also to locate another vaccination site on the island.

As it relates to when vaccinations will resume on the Family Islands, Dr Dahl-Regis said the committee is still working to finalise those plans.

Dr Dahl-Regis said there has been high interest in vaccinations for some islands like Abaco, but stressed that having to constantly dispatch COVID-19 vaccines to the Family Islands is proving to be difficult.

“We also have a great demand for Abaco and we are meeting this afternoon at 2 o’clock to see how we are going to accommodate all the needs and the demand for the vaccines,” she said.

“We had a supply problem before but now we have a demand (issue). We have to figure out how we’re going to (accommodate) demand because we really want as many people to have the vaccine quickly and we need more resources to do it.

“So, the advance team goes down on Friday and…so we hope the transfer of knowledge will run smoothly so that when we start in Grand Bahama on Saturday and Sunday that we won’t have to spend a day of training,” Dr Dahl-Regis added.

She said officials are trying to avoid having to re-vaccinate people with another first shot due to the fact that they weren't able to get their second shots in the recommended time frame.

When The Tribune visited the gymnasium, many Bahamians said concern about contracting the virus was among the reasons they showed up.

Others said their preference for Pfizer as opposed to the AstraZeneca shot helped influence their decision to finally get vaccinated.

“There are a huge number of persons who I’ve spoken to in the community who had a little scepticism about the AstraZeneca vaccine and, of course, I don’t know if social media added to that, but, of course, persons were waiting to get the Pfizer vaccine like myself and we’re more comfortable,” said Lindbergh Smith.

For 12-year-old Vikita Richardson, it was about keeping herself safe.

“I wanted to keep myself safe today from the COVID-19 and I wanted to make sure that if I do get the COVID-19 vaccine that I don’t get the worse side of it and I won’t die and all of those things,” she said.

The seventh-grade student was accompanied by her mother, Amy Rahming who had already been vaccinated. Many young children were seen lined up at the site with their parents.

Ms Rahming said she feels more at ease about her daughter’s safety, especially with the new school year approaching, noting that masks “are simply not enough”.

“The risk (of the vaccine) pales in comparison to the benefits,” she said.

The young mother also gave this message for parents who may be hesitant in allowing their children to get vaccinated.

“I would say do your research,” she said. “Speak to your child’s paediatrician or general practitioner and ask as many questions as you possibly can, the research and the information is there online. Credible sources are online. Do your research and if you have to pray about it, pray about it.”

Some people said there were some kinks in the vaccination system that still needed to be ironed out.

“There were three young ladies that were here very early and they were told that if they didn’t have an appointment that they couldn’t be served and they left and they are very frustrated over the process so I’m hoping that they can iron out a lot of administrative issues and the bureaucracy that’s related to vaccine,” one man said.

“No one should leave here unvaccinated. If a person shows up here, they ought to be vaccinated. It shouldn’t matter if they have an appointment or not.”

The National COVID-19 Vaccine Consultative Committee is seeking to fully vaccinate 60,000 people over the next six weeks.

At last report 51,150 people have been fully vaccinated in the country while 68,323 have received one dose.

Comments

ThisIsOurs says...

I dont understand why they have a demand issue. Everything is based on appointments give the walkups an appt to register. If they chose to stay on the line from 9 till their 2PM appt... That takes care of them.

The only hickup should be frail people. You dont want them moving up and down.

As to families why is there a problem. If you have a family of 20 people you need to book 20 appointments. Ask the question. If you bring 21 people one person gets an appt to come back. Noone should be waiting

Posted 20 August 2021, 4:28 p.m. Suggest removal

to clarify. walkups dont get a vaccination appt. They get a time to come back to "register" in form of a paper ticket with a date and time. Just print out some tickets using mail merge or the like with consecutive "appointment booking" slots.

The paper ticket ensures that youre not spending any unscheduled time on anyone, even registration is scheduled

They can chose to come back or find a more convenient way to register themselves. The more people you try to accommodate the more people will "hear" *oh you can walk right up and get served*

Posted 21 August 2021, 10:44 a.m. Suggest removal

whogothere says...

This is first article from a mainstream media that admits what many of us 'skeptics' that have commented on this paper have been saying for months - vaccination ain't cutting the mustard. It doesn't last, boosters are coming but we don't know if the booster will last either.

With that said the entire premise of the of vaccination passport and thrust of emergency orders is pointless...maybe that is why the FNM are rolling the dice...the writing is on the wall...

www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/…

Posted 21 August 2021, 4:42 p.m. Suggest removal

baclarke says...

I don't know what the FNMs strategy is, not that i care, but the vaccines are a positive thing. Even the article you linked still says that "if you are infected, being vaccinated helps". They aren't the perfect solution but they will help to keep persons out of the hospitals. Sure, booster shots are a given at this point, but persons are already used to annual flu booster shots. Either way, the booster only seems to be benefitting the over 60 crowd. The younger crowd still has great protection even though efficacy has diminished. It also says this in the article.

Posted 21 August 2021, 8:19 p.m. Suggest removal

Positive for at risk persons, but remember COVID s impact is marginal to 96% of the population. The only positive is to lower risk for a tiny proportion of vulnerable persons. The argument for universal vaccination dies on that hill given that it has little impact on transmission. The main and largely promoted reason was to protect not just yourself but others - if you re young and healthy or had COVID already you re already protected - stripping your rights is not just unconstitutional but impractical.

Other considerations: The sustained injections of MRNA is an unknown so there is possibly diminishing returns (third booster not stopping the Israeli wave) and data on the long term out comes and side effect profile is already huge in a system that is designed to not have these things reported.

The article is important because it’s shows cracks in the narrative - people have been banned from social media networks for saying less. The reality is our freedoms were crushed to save us from a tiger which turned out to be pussy cat and we were sold key to our cage door only to find that door doesn’t go anywhere - anybody that spoke this truth was branded a conspiracy theorist...

Posted 22 August 2021, 5:14 a.m. Suggest removal

John says...

A disturbing trend among vaccinated countries. Is it appears the more they vaccinate, the more their Covid numbers increase. This is tru for The United States, UK, France, Israel and even The Bahamas. And whilst the numbers of new cases in several of these countries plateaued for a few days or weeks, in some cases, the numbers started going back up, rather than declining. This is unusual because Covid viruses function in waves. Usually when s strain passes over a population, it would move on to another part of the world, mutate or create variants and move back in another wave. Of course the Delta wave has crossed continents and is now in The Americas, but, apparently it is still very active in Europe. Did mass vaccinations cause the by to adapt to a diy mode of infection?

Posted 22 August 2021, 6:45 a.m. Suggest removal

THE BAHAMAS is amongst the few countries that saw declines in its numbers of new cases over the last seven days, compared to the seven days prior. The number of new cases DECLINED this week from 1,011 the week before to 532 this week. A 47% decrease. Most other countries, with the exception of a few, either saw their new cases increase or remain the same. Deaths from Covid dropped from 18 to 17 over the same period, representing a 6% decrease.

Posted 22 August 2021, 7:12 a.m. Suggest removal

Could be a factor of our size. Less time for the vaccine to make the rounds. Less time to reach the point of no more bodies to infect

Posted 22 August 2021, 12:27 p.m. Suggest removal

Well we do see these declines from time to time, then there is a holiday here or in the US snd then there are spikes and surges. Then time as the country gets back to seeing a decline, there is some other holiday or event. Snd there are several countries that had no nee cases over a seven day period. This hasn’t happened here probably since last year,

Posted 22 August 2021, 3:13 p.m. Suggest removal

In all honesty our soikes have had nothing to do with holidays. A holiday somewhere around the time of the spike was a mere coincidence.

We've had 3 extremely distinct spikes since March 2020. The first spike happened when there was a "decision" in July 2020 to open the border without proper controls. The second spike happened around spring break, March 15th. The final spike happened when the govt made a "decision" to open to homeporting. Our spikes were basically administration made. Our declines have been natural exhausting of the infection cycle. The govt has done nothing to date to effectively cut short the natural lifecycle of a spike.

Posted 22 August 2021, 8 p.m. Suggest removal

The PM will have a press conference today to tell the Bahamas that his govt has found the solution for the pandemic because they've secured enough vaccines to vaccinate the entire population.

Ok but not entirely true, he has 250,000 vaccines, enough to possibly vaccinate the entire adult population. Still a positive step.

But sadly our govt continues to implement strategies that are behind the 8 ball. There is alot of research being conducted around the world on COVID incorporating both vaccinated, unvaccinated and studying antigen levels in persons who survived COVID. We're doing none of it. We're actively pretending that natural immunity doesn't even exist.

Our population is uniquely at risk and we are doing nothing to examine unique approaches to protect our vulnerable population.

Well this very interesting article was published on cnn.com today "**Booster shots alone will not save us**"
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/21/opinions…

"*Only a few months ago, the protection the mRNA vaccinations offered appeared miraculous. Some researchers even said it was possible that immunity could last for years.*"

"*Variation in people's immune response to vaccination could explain much of the breakthrough phenomenon.*"

"***the booster is another temporary measure that will provide months of less worry. Because -- spoiler alert -- Israel has already shown the third shot provides a real but only TRANSIENT protection against infection**. Even after three vaccines, some people are **still getting infected***"

Posted 22 August 2021, 11:37 a.m. Suggest removal

correction: sufficient doses to fully vaccinate 250,000 people

Posted 22 August 2021, 12:24 p.m. Suggest removal

Based on thd above, what we are doing now has already proven to be flawed. But the govt is using it as the be and end all to stop COVID. One of the REALLY interesting things from the article is that the study found that persons infected with COVID who had a greater immune response at the start had a greater liklihood of not being reinfected. What does that say? Irrespective of vaccination status, the strength of your immmune system, not perpetual boosters may be the greatest protection.

We dont even have data on immune system response. We dont have data on persons who've never had serious adverse effects in our population. We dont know if theyve been COVID free or just asymptomatic. Whats the common thread in those people? We havent published data on obesity and infection and death. We've done none of it. First we pretended that it was only old people so dont worry. We pretended that it was only immuno compromised people so dont worry. Now we're pretending that vaccines will save us. All of this pretense is losing precious time.

Our govts will not save us its clear they are concerned about PR. Listen to the PM today tell us for the 5th time that he's saved the Bahamas. The medical community as a body needs to step up and start proposing meaningful research and publishing the associated data. There's alot the world could learn from us.

Posted 22 August 2021, 11:41 a.m. Suggest removal

carltonr61 says...

https://www.rt.com/usa/532582-moderna-v…

As long he alone in dream world believe his bs then we are alright

Posted 22 August 2021, 6 p.m. Suggest removal