CEO of the North Central Regional Health Authority (NCRHA) Davlin Thomas says it has administered 243,610 doses of covid19 vaccines to constituents.

At the Ministry of Health's covid19 news conference on Monday, Thomas said the vaccines include the Sinopharm, AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson through a combination of outreach programmes, mass vaccination sites, and health centres in the district.

He said the NCRHA has conducted outreach vaccination drives at churches, temples, mosques, Trincity Mall, Xtra Foods Arima, and the farmer's market in addition to mass vaccination drives at the University of TT (UTT) campus in Chaguanas, the Wallerfield raceway and the Costatt, El Dorado campus.

'We continue with the elderly express experience, which is a VIP experience for the elderly,' said Thomas. He said the NCRHA has engaged them at their homes or at homes for the elderly, visiting 1,355 patients at approximately 71 homes.

Thomas said it has also implemented several contingency plans for worst-case scenarios, including an app, available on Android Playstore, which is currently monitoring 118 patients.

He said the NCRHA is also continuing its telemedicine programme, which has had over 40,000 calls to date. He said its current patient load is 15,000.

Thomas said the authority will continue to build capacity in terms of training for worst-case instances including practical airway-management training sessions for critically ill patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) and the high dependency unit (HDU). He said at least 50 healthcare professionals have been trained in the last month.

Other training initiatives for healthcare professionals include covid19 emergency care training for escorts (268 members of staff), management of recovered covid19 care for 249 members of staff, infection prevention and control for 4,813, basic life support for 778, care for ventilated patients refresher training for 305 nurses, and psychosocial support and mental-health awareness for 889 members of staff.