The Min­is­ters of For­eign Af­fairs and Min­is­ters of Health from thir­ty-three coun­tries, ter­ri­to­ries and re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions in the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean States (ACS), to­day agreed to co­or­di­nate their COVID-19 re­spons­es and to set up a meet­ing of tech­ni­cal ex­perts, to con­cep­tu­alise a joint re­gion­al re­sponse and strate­gies in tack­ling the dead­ly pan­dem­ic.

A re­lease is­sued by the ACS re­ports that the Min­is­ters, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cers and oth­er func­tionar­ies of coun­tries of the Greater Caribbean shared their na­tion­al re­spons­es and con­cerns in the First Ex­tra­or­di­nary Meet­ing of ACS Min­is­ters of For­eign Af­fairs and Min­is­ters of Health on COVID-19.

The meet­ing was host­ed vir­tu­al­ly by the ACS Sec­re­tari­at in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Min­is­ters ex­pressed sol­i­dar­i­ty and wish­es of a speedy re­cov­ery to the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Miguel Var­gas, who test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus this week.

Chair of the Min­is­te­r­i­al Coun­cil of Bar­ba­dos Dr. Jerome X. Wal­cott not­ed:

“Since the be­gin­ning of the year, the world has been fo­cused on coro­n­avirus… in this re­gion it has been spread­ing and all coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries of the re­gion have been af­fect­ed in var­i­ous ways. This was a very im­por­tant meet­ing in the in­ter­est of all Caribbean states that re­lates to how we deal col­lec­tive­ly and col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly in ad­dress­ing the pub­lic scourge of COVID-19.”

ACS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr. June Soomer posit­ed that in­for­ma­tion-shar­ing must be the first step.

“We have heard how dif­fer­ent re­gions are do­ing dif­fer­ent things and how they are do­ing sim­i­lar things. Best prac­tices must be shared,” she stat­ed.

The ACS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al called for the re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions such as ACS, CARI­COM and ECLAC to be at the ta­ble to­geth­er in all dis­cus­sions. She rec­om­mend­ed that any re­gion­al re­sponse to this new strain of coro­n­avirus must in­clude strate­gies for test­ing, care, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, co­or­di­nat­ing sup­plies, food se­cu­ri­ty, im­mi­gra­tion and cus­toms, ed­u­ca­tion, geo-map­ping, re­mote work sys­tems and the psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact of the virus and quar­an­tine.

Cuban Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs, Bruno Ro­driguez, who spoke to the in­ter­nal progress made by his coun­try and the hu­man re­sources and tech­ni­cal sup­port pro­vid­ed glob­al­ly, rec­om­mend­ed that a tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sion be the fol­low-up to the Meet­ing of Min­is­ters. He in­di­cat­ed:

“De­spite this dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion, Cu­ba can mod­est­ly of­fer some co­op­er­a­tion... We can­not un­der­es­ti­mate the val­ue of joint ef­forts.”

Cu­ba al­so sug­gests invit­ing oth­er coun­tries of the hemi­sphere, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, which may be will­ing to par­tic­i­pate in the in­ter­est of ex­pand­ing co­or­di­na­tion and ex­change.  The Cuban For­eign Min­is­ter al­so stressed that the re­gion will have to care­ful­ly con­sid­er the ways to face the eco­nom­ic, com­mer­cial and the con­se­quent so­cial im­pacts on all of our coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly on vul­ner­a­ble groups.

Not­ing that COVID-19 is no re­specter of per­sons, Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA), Dr. Joy St. John, urged the Re­gion to fo­cus on “gov­er­nance in this glob­al cri­sis”. She stressed that there is no known treat­ment for the virus.

The ACS Sec­re­tari­at will an­nounce the de­tails of the tech­ni­cal meet­ing in the com­ing days.

Coun­tries par­tic­i­pat­ing in to­day’s vir­tu­al meet­ing in­clud­ed: An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Colom­bia, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Cu­ba, Do­mini­ca, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Ja­maica, Mex­i­co, Nicaragua, Pana­ma, Saint Lu­cia, Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Suri­name, Trinidad & To­ba­go, Venezuela, Aru­ba, British Vir­gin Is­lands, France, Guade­loupe, The King­dom of the Nether­lands, Mar­tinique, Sint Maarten, CARI­COM, ECLAC, SELA, CARPHA and PA­HO.