The Peo­ples Re­pub­lic of Chi­na has do­nat­ed lab­o­ra­to­ry sup­plies for COVID-19 test­ing. The sup­plies were re­ceived by Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA). The do­na­tion worth ap­prox­i­mate­ly sev­en­ty-sev­en thou­sand US dol­lars (USD$77,000) in­cludes: • One Dry-ice ma­chine • 60,000 pairs of Gloves • 100,000 Tips • 250 Plas­tic au­to­clavable bags • 5,000 Cry­ovials • 500 Cryo box­es. The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from CARPHA

The Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na has stepped in once more to sup­port the Caribbean Re­gion in its fight against COVID-19. This week, the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) re­ceived ad­di­tion­al lab­o­ra­to­ry sup­plies for COVID-19 test­ing on be­half of Mem­ber States from the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na.

The do­na­tions, made by His Ex­cel­len­cy Fang Qiu, Am­bas­sador of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na to the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, were re­ceived for dis­tri­b­u­tion by the CARPHA Ex­ec­u­tive Man­age­ment.

The han­dover cer­e­mo­ny took place on Thurs­day 7 th Oc­to­ber 2021, at the Em­bassy of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na in Port of Spain. “We are pleased to re­ceive these items as the des­ig­nat­ed re­ceiv­ing agency for the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at.

We are hum­bled by your con­tin­ued trust in CARPHA to be the cus­to­di­an of these sup­plies and pieces of equip­ment for dis­tri­b­u­tion, which will add to our abil­i­ty to pro­vide sup­port to the Gov­ern­ments and Peo­ple of the Re­gion in their con­tin­ued fight against COVID-19,” stat­ed Dr. Joy St. John, CARPHA Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor in her open­ing re­marks as she thanked Am­bas­sador Fang Qiu. “Over the past months, we have seen the evo­lu­tion of this COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The needs of Mem­ber States have changed over time as they re­spond to the flu­id­i­ty of the nec­es­sary re­sponse due to the dy­nam­ic na­ture of the virus,” Dr. St. John said, adding “CARI­COM coun­tries are cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing surges in in­fec­tion rates and are em­ploy­ing all meth­ods to avoid over­whelm­ing the health sys­tems. With these surges, the de­mand for per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE) and test­ing sup­plies al­so in­creased.

There­fore, with this do­na­tion, Mem­ber States will have re­duced pro­cure­ment chal­lenges. CARPHA and our Mem­ber States will great­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the med­ical sup­plies in­clud­ed in this do­na­tion, es­pe­cial­ly since sup­ply chains are still dis­rupt­ed and many of the do­nat­ed sup­plies are dif­fi­cult to pro­cure.” The do­na­tion worth ap­prox­i­mate­ly sev­en­ty-sev­en thou­sand US dol­lars (USD$77,000) in­cludes: • One Dry-ice ma­chine • 60,000 pairs of Gloves • 100,000 Tips • 250 Plas­tic au­to­clavable bags • 5,000 Cry­ovials • 500 Cryo box­es

The do­na­tion is a fol­low-up to the Sec­ond Spe­cial Vice-Min­is­te­r­i­al Meet­ing on COVID-19 among Chi­na and the Caribbean Coun­tries Hav­ing Diplo­mat­ic Re­la­tions with Chi­na, which was held in last De­cem­ber.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Chi­na an­nounced the do­na­tion of med­ical ma­te­ri­als worth 5 mil­lion Chi­nese Yuan to nine Caribbean coun­tries and the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at. In Ju­ly 2020, CARPHA re­ceived med­ical sup­plies – 15,000 swab test kits and 30,000 med­ical face masks on be­half of nine Mem­ber States, name­ly An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, the Com­mon­wealth of The Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, the Com­mon­wealth of Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, the Co­op­er­a­tive Re­pub­lic of Guyana, Ja­maica, the Re­pub­lic of Suri­name and the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Virus re­spects no bor­ders and makes no dis­tinc­tion be­tween races. On­ly through sol­i­dar­i­ty and co­op­er­a­tion can we de­feat the pan­dem­ic,” said His Ex­cel­len­cy Fang Qiu in his open­ing re­marks. “We sin­cere­ly hope this lat­est do­na­tion would con­tribute to the on­go­ing ef­forts of the Caribbean coun­tries to fight against the pan­dem­ic.” His Ex­cel­len­cy went on to say “Chi­na at­tach­es great im­por­tance to de­vel­op­ing re­la­tions with CARI­COM and its Mem­ber States and sup­ports the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at in co­or­di­nat­ing re­gion­al coun­tries to strength­en co­op­er­a­tion and cope with chal­lenges.

In clos­ing, he en­cour­aged Caribbean coun­tries to make full use of the Chi­na-LAC Spe­cial Loan for Com­bat­ing COVID-19 with a to­tal cred­it of 1 bil­lion US Dol­lars. Chi­na re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing with the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at in fur­ther­ance of our co­op­er­a­tion in com­bat­ing the pan­dem­ic, by pro­vid­ing most need­ed med­ical ma­te­ri­als and vac­cines, and shar­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment.

On be­half of CARI­COM and its Mem­ber States, As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr. Dou­glas Slater ex­pressed his grat­i­tude to the Gov­ern­ment and Peo­ple of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, say­ing, “We know we are part of the sol­i­dar­i­ty that you have ex­pressed glob­al­ly in the fight against COVID19. Chi­na demon­strat­ed this glob­al sol­i­dar­i­ty at a very ear­ly stage, by de­vel­op­ing and shar­ing the gene se­quence of the orig­i­nal SARS COV 2 virus.

Chi­na has al­so shared tech­ni­cal in­puts which as­sist­ed with our de­vel­op­ment and un­der­stand­ing of the dis­ease. In clos­ing Dr. Slater said “At times, the chal­lenges of COVID are un­known and in this case the break­ing of sup­plies chain sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed some of our mem­ber states. So, we are pleased that we are able to re­ceive these re­sources. They came in very handy and time­ly be­cause we are cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a surge of the dis­ease.

We look for­ward to a day when we can all re­lax, this dis­ease has been con­quered, know­ing that the ex­per­tise that re­side in Chi­na would have played a sig­nif­i­cant role.” Fol­low­ing the han­dover, Dr. Joy St. John, and His Ex­cel­len­cy Fang Qiu signed the han­dover and ac­cep­tance cer­tifi­cate.