By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

DEMAND for the COVID-19 vaccine has flattened in The Bahamas even as more doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab could arrive in the country as early as today, according to Ed Fields, deputy chair of the National COVID-19 Vaccine Consultative Committee.

Mr Fields spoke to reporters at the Kendal Isaacs Gym as Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis received his second dose of the vaccine. Second doses became available yesterday.

“We have seen a flattening of demand but you know we hope we are gonna go out and do more push in terms of getting people to understand where we are,” Mr Fields said.

He said demand will determine how many more first doses of the vaccines officials will administer.

“This is basically all math and all supply side,” he said. “We expect another 33,000 literally any day now, as early as tomorrow (Tuesday) and so we are now able to be more flexible giving out first doses.”

“Obviously the demand will determine how we manage that, so I want the folks who are out there to know that we’re literally monitoring this day by day based on the demand for first doses and, of course, making sure that second dose folks all have doses available for them so that’s how we are going to have to manage it.

“I couldn’t sit here right now and say we’re gonna stop on this day or we’re gonna stop on that day. We have to look and see how the demand is happening.”

The Bahamas expects to have received at least 120,000 vaccine doses before the summer.

“You remember from previous conferences we’ve said that we would be getting our full complement of that by the end of May so in addition to the 33,000, by the end of May we’ll be getting some more doses that will take us to the full 120,000. That doesn’t account for the fact that we are continually working on getting more supplies from other sources in addition to that,” he said.

The Bahamas received 33,000 doses through the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization’s COVAX Facility in March and is expected to get 100,800 doses through that facility. The country also received 20,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses in March as a donation from India before that country was overwhelmed by a new massive outbreak.

“We anticipate easily that we will meet all expiry date issues,” Mr Fields said.

“Whatever is the expiry date that’s closest, we then load those into arms as fast as we can prior to that date. We don’t feel that we are going to have any issues with (the) expiry date. We anticipate that as we get more in the summer months, supplies will become more available.”

In recent days, some residents have complained about the vaccine registration website, saying they are unable to book their second appointment. Mr Fields said officials are working to correct glitches with the site.

“Very simply as you know, when we were asked to start this process we had already in process the development of an appointment platform but as we learned that the vaccines would be coming to us more quickly than we previously thought we then put in a back-up and the back-up that was used was Doctors Hospital which already had a platform up though it wasn’t as flexible as we like,” he said.

“We were able to use that platform to initiate doses, the first 10,000 doses. In order to be able to issue certificates of vaccines, etc, we need to have all of the people who were on the Doctors Hospital platform integrated into the new platform we are using. As you know, any transfer of data creates some hiccups because you now have to transfer 10,000 names in the same format over to a new platform that may not have the matching format so I think out of 10,000 we recognise that we have probably 800 or 1,000 names that didn’t transfer for whatever reason.

“We then subsequently updated. That number is now dwindled down significantly. We’ll have to work until all the data is transferred and that really is where the hitch is. That only affects a small minority of people. Of course, all the people who are on the new platform, there is no issue with that, that’s just a matter of time. They have to get their second dose seven weeks after they get their first dose.”