Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will to­day have a vir­tu­al meet­ing with US House Ma­jor­i­ty Whip Con­gress­man James Clyburn to con­tin­ue lob­by­ing for vac­cines from the US for T&T.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Amery Browne con­firmed this yes­ter­day con­cern­ing T&T’s lat­est ef­forts to get vac­cines.

T&T has ob­tained vac­cines so far from Bar­ba­dos, In­dia, Chi­na, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Bermu­da.

This coun­try is al­so seek­ing jabs from the US, Eu­ro­pean Union, African Med­ical Coun­cil, Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na, John­son & John­son and await­ing ap­proval re­gard­ing Cu­ba’s vac­cines.

T&T is seek­ing to get some of the 80 mil­lion vac­cines which the US is dis­trib­ut­ing.

Row­ley has writ­ten US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and spo­ken to oth­er US of­fi­cials on the is­sue.

Af­ter Row­ley’s meet­ing with Clyburn, Browne will lat­er to­day meet Dr Beth Cameron, who is Biden’s se­nior di­rec­tor for glob­al health se­cu­ri­ty.

“She’s a lead pol­i­cy­mak­er for their glob­al vac­cine strat­e­gy,” Browne said.

Browne didn’t com­ment on how many vac­cines T&T would seek from the US.

“We’re seek­ing as many as we can get,” he said.

He added that on Tues­day, he met Win­nie Byany­i­ma, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of UN­AIDS, to dis­cuss “The Peo­ple’s” vac­cine ini­tia­tive and how it can help shape vac­cine ini­tia­tives com­ing out of the EU and North Amer­i­ca.

“Such meet­ings and in­ter­jec­tions will con­tin­ue at all lev­els aimed not just at press­ing for de­tails of the vac­cine ini­tia­tive to be fi­nalised and dis­sem­i­nat­ed as soon as pos­si­ble but al­so seek­ing to proac­tive­ly shape those de­tails in favour of T&T and Cari­com,” he said.

On the EU’s vac­cine plan an­nounced last week, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said Row­ley would write the EU on the is­sue im­me­di­ate­ly, Browne met with EU of­fi­cials in T&T and T&T’s am­bas­sador in Brus­sels were al­so work­ing on that is­sue.

Yes­ter­day, Browne added, “Our diplo­mats in Brus­sels lead by am­bas­sador Col­in Con­nel­ly are fol­low­ing up di­rect­ly with the EU their vac­cine an­nounce­ment sub­se­quent to the PM’s prompt cor­re­spon­dence.”