Renu­ka Singh

High-rank­ing Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials are cur­rent­ly in dis­cus­sions with their coun­ter­parts in the Unit­ed States to work out how this coun­try could ac­cess the mil­lions of COVID-19 vac­cines be­ing do­nat­ed by the US.

Dur­ing the Ur­gent Ques­tions ses­sion in Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark asked Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh about T&T el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for the vac­cines in­ject­ed by the US in­to the Co­v­ax fa­cil­i­ty.

“(It) is ac­tive­ly be­ing dis­cussed amongst the fol­low­ing par­ties: the White House, PA­HO (Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion), CARPHA (Caribbean Pub­lic Health Au­thor­i­ty), the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs,” Deyals­ingh said.

Guardian Me­dia has re­port­ed that Gavi, the body that man­ages the Co­v­ax fa­cil­i­ty, con­firmed that T&T did not qual­i­fy for a share of the 500 mil­lion dos­es be­ing do­nat­ed by the US.

A Gavi spokesman told Guardian Me­dia that be­cause T&T is a self-fi­nanc­ing mem­ber of the fa­cil­i­ty, it did not qual­i­fy.

The US stash of vac­cines is for 92 donor-fund­ed na­tions.

Deyals­ingh al­so said that it was “pre­ma­ture” to give a time­frame for the con­clu­sion of the dis­cus­sions to ac­quire vac­cines but said that the dis­cus­sions were “ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion” by all five par­tic­i­pants.

It was al­so re­port­ed yes­ter­day that T&T is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in talks with the US about a do­na­tion of vac­cines through CARPHA in­stead of the Co­v­ax fa­cil­i­ty.

Mark al­so asked what would hap­pen if this coun­try failed to qual­i­fy for the vac­cines and asked for a pos­si­ble Gov­ern­ment re­sponse to T&T fail­ing to ac­cess those vac­cines and whether the vac­cine roll­out would be im­pact­ed.

But Deyals­ingh said that it would be “pre­ma­ture” to ac­cept Mark’s as­ser­tion at this point.

Deyals­ingh asked that Mark be pa­tient and wait for “the fruit to ripen out of the dis­cus­sions”.

“It is be­ing ac­tive­ly pur­sued,” he said.

“The Gov­ern­ment has had many irons in the fire and for that rea­son, we have im­port­ed in­to the coun­try 200,000 dos­es of Sinopharm vac­cines in­to the coun­try last week. We al­so have an­oth­er 300,000 com­ing in Ju­ly,” he said.

“Our bi­lat­er­al talks are pay­ing rich div­i­dends and that is be­cause the Gov­ern­ment has been act­ing from day one to pro­cure vac­cines ap­proved by the WHO,” he said.