Trinidad and To­ba­go will re­ceive some of the 60 mil­lion As­tra Zeneca vac­cines be­ing do­nat­ed by the Unit­ed States.

This came as wel­comed news as the coun­try was fac­ing a short­fall in its cur­rent vac­ci­na­tion ef­forts.

So far T&T has re­ceived 2,000 dos­es as a gift from Bar­ba­dos, 33,600 from the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty and was gift­ed an­oth­er 40,000 from In­dia.

An­oth­er 67,200 is ex­pect­ed from CO­V­AX but the de­liv­ery date is un­cer­tain. This coun­try al­so has a Non-dis­clo­sure Agree­ment (NDA) signed with Chi­na for Sinopharm vac­cines and al­ready put in a pre-or­der but that vac­cine does not yet have World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­proval. That ap­proval is ex­pect­ed at the end of April.

Ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports, the US was on track to have as much as 300 mil­lion ad­di­tion­al vac­cines in its cof­fers.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne yes­ter­day con­firmed that T&T should re­ceive some of those vac­cines and con­ver­sa­tions have been ini­ti­at­ed to re­ceive some.

“I have al­ready had fol­low up di­a­logue with the US Em­bassy in PoS (Port-of-Spain) and with our Am­bas­sador in Wash­ing­ton D.C,” Browne said in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“What I can say at this stage is that the Gov­ern­ment and the peo­ple of T&T can an­tic­i­pate that some of these vac­cines would be availed to us,” Browne said.

Two weeks ago, US Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken held a fundrais­ing event for CO­V­AX, the fa­cil­i­ty that dis­trib­utes coro­n­avirus vac­cines to low-and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries.

“We are very pleased with these de­vel­op­ments, on be­half of Cari­com and on be­half of all the de­vel­op­ing coun­tries that re­quire vast­ly im­proved ac­cess to COVID-19 vac­cines,” Browne said.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in his ca­pac­i­ty as Chair of CARI­COM talked about the un­equal dis­tri­b­u­tion of the vac­cine. Through Cari­com Row­ley wrote to US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden to share its stock­pile of vac­cines on two oc­ca­sions.

In the sec­ond let­ter dat­ed March 19, which the Prime Min­is­ter shared on his so­cial me­dia pages yes­ter­day, Row­ley said that the Caribbean has been re­ferred to as the “Third Bor­der of the Unit­ed States” by pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions.

Row­ley high­light­ed the re­ports that the US was about to share its sur­plus vac­cines with Cana­da and Mex­i­co.

“The log­ic of pur­su­ing pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures with neigh­bour­ing coun­tries through ad­min­is­ter­ing the vac­cine is ir­refutable,” Row­ley said in that let­ter.

“With sim­i­lar log­ic and giv­en the high in­ci­dence of trans­mis­sion from trav­el, the con­cept of “neigh­bour­ing coun­try” could be re­fined to in­clude the Mem­ber States of CARI­COM,” Row­ley said.

Biden re­spond­ed on April 1, a let­ter the PM al­so re­vealed on so­cial me­dia, say­ing that he re­mem­bered “fond­ly” con­ver­sa­tions that he and Row­ley shared dur­ing the 2016 Caribbean En­er­gy Sum­mit in T&T.

Biden said that while his first pri­or­i­ty was the vac­ci­na­tion of the Amer­i­can peo­ple he would share the stock­pile of vac­cines.

“But I want to be clear that we will share vac­cines, in­clud­ing through CO­V­AX, when we are able,” Biden wrote.

Browne ac­knowl­edged Row­ley’s ef­forts to ac­cess this cache of vac­cines.

“The Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Chair of Cari­com, has been a pi­o­neer­ing and stead­fast cham­pi­on for im­proved ac­cess to life-sav­ing vac­cines in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion, his Cari­com col­leagues, and oth­er lead­ing ad­vo­cates,” Browne said.

“The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca has clear­ly in­di­cat­ed that it is step­ping for­ward in lead­er­ship on this crit­i­cal glob­al mat­ter, and the fol­low-up work is on­go­ing to en­sure that our re­gion and na­tion ben­e­fit.

“This mea­sure al­so sends a pow­er­ful sig­nal to the rest of the de­vel­oped world and it is my hope that more of the vac­cine-rich coun­tries would fol­low suit,” he said.

“It is note­wor­thy that this mea­sure is pre­cise­ly what Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley re­quest­ed on be­half of CARI­COM in his cor­re­spon­dence to US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden,” Browne added.

UNC calls for Govt to re­quest vac­cines

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so slammed the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for us­ing this promise of vac­cines from the US to “pro­mote them­selves and cre­ate doubt and con­fu­sion”.

Row­ley was re­spond­ing to a me­dia re­lease by MP for Ca­roni East Dr Rishad Seecha­ran who called for the Gov­ern­ment to not drop the ball on this mat­ter and di­rect­ed the PM to con­tact the US for its share of vac­cines.

De­spite pre­vi­ous me­dia re­ports that Cari­com and Row­ley have been mak­ing these re­quests months be­fore yes­ter­day’s an­nounce­ment of the do­na­tions, Seecha­ran is now say­ing that he was “call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to make an im­me­di­ate re­quest for vac­cines to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, through the Con­sulate based in Port of Spain”.

Seecha­ran added, “The Row­ley Ad­min­is­tra­tion should not hes­i­tate, as it did when In­dia opened its vac­cine sup­plies to the world in Jan­u­ary 2021. We were the last of the CARI­COM na­tions to write to the Prime Min­is­ter of In­dia, ask­ing for as­sis­tance with our Covid-19 Re­cov­ery.”

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter, said that the UNC “pay very close at­ten­tion” to what he is do­ing.

“But they de­lib­er­ate­ly choose a strat­e­gy to con­fuse, mis­in­form and lie on­ly to make things look bad or worse than they are and then blame the Gov­ern­ment to fit their po­lit­i­cal agen­da of am­bi­tion with­out sub­stance,” he said yes­ter­day.