Renu­ka Singh

In­dia High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go Arun Ku­mar Sahu says his coun­try’s do­na­tion of 40,000 COVID-19 vac­cines should be here next Mon­day.

Sahu’s of­fice is­sued an up­date on the vac­cine ar­rival to the me­dia via email yes­ter­day.

“The Gov­ern­ment of In­dia’s do­na­tion of 40,000 Co­v­ishield vac­cines to Trinidad and To­ba­go is sched­uled to ar­rive in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day, 12th April 2021. Nec­es­sary lo­gis­tics have been put in place for its de­liv­ery,” Sahu said.

The de­liv­ery of the do­nat­ed vac­cines will mark the end of a long road of diplo­mat­ic dis­cord be­tween the State and the In­dia High Com­mis­sion­er.

Sahu and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley were ini­tial­ly at odds over whether there was any fa­cil­i­ty for CARI­COM is­lands to ac­cess vac­cine do­na­tions from In­dia.

Both Bar­ba­dos and Do­mini­ca had re­ceived vac­cines do­nat­ed from In­dia by Feb­ru­ary and there were ques­tions about whether T&T was late to re­quest vac­cines or whether the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er did not alert the Gov­ern­ment of the avail­abil­i­ty of vac­cines from In­dia, through its Vac­cine Maitri pro­gramme.

Even­tu­al­ly, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne stepped in and met with Sahu and a joint state­ment was is­sued say­ing that the two groups would work to­geth­er to get the vac­cines to T&T.

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so broke es­tab­lished pro­to­cols when she wrote to In­dia Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley had al­so writ­ten to Mo­di mak­ing a re­quest for vac­cines.

T&T is al­so ex­pect­ed to re­ceive 100,000 vac­cines from Chi­na un­der the Sinopharm la­bel once it re­ceives World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­proval.

Three weeks ago, Row­ley met vir­tu­al­ly with Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­peng for bi­lat­er­al talks which in­clud­ed dis­cus­sions about ac­cess to vac­cines.

Days lat­er, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said that he and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram were putting to­geth­er the pre-or­der for the Chi­na-made vac­cine de­spite it not hav­ing the WHO ap­proval.

The ful­fil­ment of that or­der is con­tin­gent on WHO ap­proval, he added.

Ac­cord­ing to the WHO, the Sinopharm vac­cine was ex­pect­ed to be ap­proved in ear­ly April. That sta­tus has since been changed to mid-April with its as­sess­ment list­ed as “in progress.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Deyals­ingh for an up­date on what was put in place for the de­liv­ery of the vac­cines but there was no re­sponse up to last evening.