T&T has al­ready do­nat­ed 10,000 dos­es of some 37,000 ex­cess dos­es of Ox­ford-As­traZeneca COVID-19 vac­cines to re­gion­al part­ners.

The first ship­ment went out on Sep­tem­ber 26.

“The Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs has been work­ing very close­ly with the Min­istry of Health, and we ap­proached coun­tries in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca with of­fers of shar­ing As­traZeneca vac­cines with them,” Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne told Guardian Me­dia.

“The Ba­hamas got 2,500 dos­es on 26 Sep­tem­ber; St Kitts and Nevis got 3,000 dos­es on 4th Oc­to­ber; Do­mini­ca got 4,500 dos­es yes­ter­day 6th Oc­to­ber.”

Browne said in each case so far, their dis­cus­sions have re­sult­ed in the re­cip­i­ent coun­tries cov­er­ing the cost of trans­porta­tion of the vac­cines. 

For the re­main­ing dos­es, he said the Gov­ern­ment was “in the fi­nal stages of ar­rang­ing oth­er con­sign­ments for else­where in the re­gion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO).”

“This pro­gramme is be­ing con­duct­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go in the best spir­it of re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty, and in prin­ci­pled recog­ni­tion of the re­al­i­ty that no na­tion would be safe from this pan­dem­ic un­til all na­tions are safe,” Browne said. 

“You would re­call that we ben­e­fit­ed from the gen­eros­i­ty of our neigh­bours and oth­er na­tions dur­ing a phase of the pan­dem­ic when there were ex­treme chal­lenges in ac­quir­ing WHO-ap­proved vac­cines. The Prime Min­is­ter’s com­mit­ment at that time was that we, in turn, would do every­thing pos­si­ble to share with oth­ers, con­tin­gent on stocks at hand.”

T&T has re­ceived a to­tal of 277,330 Ox­ford-As­traZeneca/Co­v­ishield dos­es so far. They in­clude do­na­tions from Bar­ba­dos, In­dia, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Bermu­da, Grena­da and Cana­da. It al­so ac­quired the largest amount through the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty which ar­rived in the coun­try in Sep­tem­ber 2020.

The up­take in the As­traZeneca dos­es dwin­dled as oth­er vac­cine brands were made avail­able to the pub­lic.