Health
Omicron Boosters, what they mean for Turks and Caicos Islands inventory of Vaccines
By Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
#TurksandCaicos, September 18, 2022 – The Turks and Caicos Islands may be forced to dump boosters whether people want to take them or not if the UK follows the FDA’s lead on ‘updated boosters’.
During August the US Food and Drug Administration approved the emergency use of bivalent vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer as updated booster shots. The shots have two components one that protects against the original covid19 strain and one that protects against Omicron BA.4 and BA.5.
But what the agency also did was rescind its emergency use approval for the original monovalent boosters. Those
boosters were the same formula as the original vaccines which means they were made to fight the initial strain of Covid and had limited efficacy against omicron and its variants.
The Turks and Caicos received thousands of those doses from the UK over the past nine months.
Now that there are several bivalent vaccines including ones that protect against Omicron and the BA.5/4 variants specifically the FDA has determined that there is no need for the original boosters. Those boosters, depending on who made them, are eligible to be used as primary doses for people who have never had a shot to prevent waste but the majority of the TCI population have already had their primary doses.
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic the UK has been one of the front runners in approving and using cutting edge treatments to protect people from the disease. They have already approved the bivalent that fights the original strain of omicron
If the UK gives Moderna and Pfizer the nod and puts a ban on the old boosters the doses may have to be dumped.
Based on the extremely low booster uptake, that would mean thousands of doses down the drain.
Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
September 29, 2023 – In a clear sign that the global community has moved past the emergency stage of the COVID-19 Pandemic; the World Health Organization (WHO) is suspending its weekly COVID updates and migrating to a monthly format.
The WHO has, for the duration of the pandemic, been more cautious about the pulling back of restrictions and
reopening of borders than other country-based agencies.
In a September 1 report, they advised: “Please note that this is the last edition of the COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update. Moving forward, as WHO transitions its COVID-19 surveillance from an emergency response to long-term COVID-19 disease prevention, control and management, we will be providing updates every four weeks.”
The WHO, along with other health agencies like the US Centers for Disease Control, had been warning about the reduced reliability of COVID-19 data because of less robust testing worldwide for some time.
The disease was downgraded from a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in May 2023.
New boosters are still being approved and the WHO is predicting that the disease will have to be controlled with yearly vaccines as variants continue to emerge much like the Flu virus.
Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
September 29, 2023 – COVID-19 is no longer a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, but the disease is still present and can still affect the population including children.
Cough fever and difficulty breathing are only some of the symptoms that young children and babies might experience when infected with the viral illness, according to a report from Johns Hopkins Medicine. 
Other symptoms include muscle or body aches; sore throat; loss of taste or smell; diarrhea; headache; fatigue; nausea or vomiting; congestion or runny nose.
Children may not be eloquent enough to properly convey their illness so parents are advised to pay close attention to their complaints and visible symptoms.
Though COVID-19 can be a mild disease for most, there are some cases that warrant immediate emergency medical attention the hospital says. These include:
- Difficulty breathing or catching his or her breath
- Inability to keep down any liquids
- confusion or inability to awaken
- Bluish lips
Both COVID and the flu tend to spike during the winter flu season so parents are advised to take precautions against them including mask wearing in high risk areas and frequent hand washing.
Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
#TurksandCaicos, September 29, 2023 – Hypertension affects 1 in 3 adults worldwide, and if countries do not scale up coverage tens of millions of people will die. That’s according to a first-of-its-kind report on the global effects of hypertension from the World Health Organization.
The September 19th report indicated that the number of people living with hypertension has doubled in less than 30
years, between 1990 and 2019, from 650 million to 1.3 billion and nearly half of the affected are unaware.
The WHO is now calling on all countries including the Turks and Caicos to invest in the prevention, detection and management of hypertension as a matter of urgency.
The organization crunched the numbers to show countries what more focused programs could do.
“An increase in the number of patients effectively treated for hypertension to levels observed in high-performing countries could prevent 76 million deaths, 120 million strokes, 79 million heart attacks, and 17 million cases of heart failure between now and 2050,” it said.
Along with saving lives, the WHO says it can also decrease spending on health. Health is usually the largest portion of the TCI budget. The cost of preventing and managing the disease versus treating its effects is massive.
“The prevention, early detection and effective management of hypertension are among the most cost-effective interventions in health care and should be prioritized by countries as part of their national health benefit package offered at a primary care level. The economic benefits of improved hypertension treatment programs outweigh the costs by about 18 to 1.”
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