Renu­ka Singh

Dis­cus­sions be­tween T&T and US to fi­nalise vac­cine do­na­tions are on­go­ing.

Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne yes­ter­day had an­oth­er vir­tu­al meet­ing to work out the de­tails.

“The de­tails were sub­ject to fur­ther dis­cus­sion to­day (yes­ter­day),” Browne said in re­sponse to queries for an up­date.

“We ex­pect the specifics of this US do­na­tion to our re­gion and coun­try to be pub­licly dis­closed in the near fu­ture,” he said.

Over the week­end, it was re­port­ed by US me­dia that the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion planned to dis­trib­ute 55 mil­lion dos­es of the vac­cine by the end of the month.

The US is do­nat­ing a large tranche through the Co­v­ax fa­cil­i­ty but T&T does not qual­i­fy as the vac­cines are meant for the donor- fund­ed coun­tries and not the self-fund­ing coun­tries like T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to the week­end re­ports, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 14 mil­lion of the dos­es to Co­v­ax will be dis­trib­uted through Co­v­ax for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Of the Cari­com na­tions though, on­ly Haiti was on the list.

On Mon­day, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that Gavi, the body that gov­erns the Co­v­ax fa­cil­i­ty, con­firmed that T&T does not qual­i­fy for the US do­na­tion in­to the fa­cil­i­ty.