BRIDGETOWN - Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) lead­ers yes­ter­day said they had agreed on a way for­ward in the re­gion’s bat­tle against the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) that has se­vere­ly af­fect­ed economies, caus­ing death and in­fec­tion to sev­er­al mem­bers of their pop­u­la­tions.

The re­gion­al lead­ers, who met for their Ninth Spe­cial Emer­gency Meet­ing via video­con­fer­ence, re­ceived pre­sen­ta­tions from the Trinidad and To­ba­go-based Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA), the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) and the Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain Ja­son Gor­don.

CARPHA ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Dr Joy St John told the meet­ing, which was at­tend­ed by all lead­ers of the 15-mem­ber group­ing, that the re­gion had done fair­ly well in its re­sponse to the pan­dem­ic, which was a di­rect re­sult of the ear­ly im­ple­men­ta­tion of mea­sures which helped to con­tain the virus. She rec­om­mend­ed a co-or­di­nat­ed ap­proach as the Caribbean pre­pares for the next phase of the virus.

In its pre­sen­ta­tion, the CDB ex­am­ined the eco­nom­ic im­pli­ca­tions for the Caribbean of the pan­dem­ic that has killed more than 100,000 peo­ple glob­al­ly since it was first de­tect­ed in Chi­na last De­cem­ber and ideas for stim­u­lat­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty go­ing for­ward.

The UWI re­searchers in­clud­ed pro­jec­tions for the fu­ture of the virus in the re­gion in their pre­sen­ta­tion, while Arch­bish­op Gor­don spoke to the so­cial im­pact of the COVID-19 as well as ideas to al­le­vi­ate those chal­lenges.

A state­ment is­sued fol­low­ing the meet­ing not­ed that the re­gion­al lead­ers had agreed on a col­lec­tive ap­proach to the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions (IFC) in ac­cess­ing as­sis­tance to meet the fi­nan­cial fis­cal chal­lenges aris­ing from the cri­sis.

They urged that the cri­te­ri­on of gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) per capi­ta not be the sole con­sid­er­a­tion in as­sess­ing the needs of the Com­mu­ni­ty and that “an un­der­stand­ing of each coun­try’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is a far bet­ter mea­sure­ment to de­ter­mine need es­pe­cial­ly as we face mul­ti­ple chal­lenges.

“They agreed that ad­di­tion­al tech­ni­cal work would be un­der­tak­en in spe­cif­ic ar­eas to be pre­sent­ed for their con­sid­er­a­tion at an­oth­er meet­ing with­in two weeks. They would be pre­sent­ed af­ter the rel­e­vant min­is­te­r­i­al coun­cils would have re­viewed the pro­pos­als,” the state­ment said.

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne, in re­port­ing to his Cab­i­net on the meet­ing yes­ter­day, had stressed the agree­ment to move as a sin­gle body in CARI­COM’s de­marche to the Bret­ton Woods in­sti­tu­tions.

“The sin­gle re­quire­ment of all CARI­COM mem­ber states at this time is bud­getary sup­port, since rev­enues have plum­met­ed, es­pe­cial­ly among the tourist-de­pen­dent states,” he told the Cab­i­net meet­ing, adding that there had been “agree­ment on the need to de-em­pha­sise the “per capi­ta GNP” cri­te­ri­on that would cause many small-is­land states to be dis­qual­i­fied from re­ceiv­ing as­sis­tance from the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions”.

The CARI­COM state­ment said pro­pos­als on a Com­mon Pub­lic Health pol­i­cy would first be pre­sent­ed to the Min­is­ters of Health and this would in­clude pro­pos­als for joint pro­cure­ment, in­clud­ing of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE) and sourc­ing of ad­di­tion­al med­ical per­son­nel. The state­ment said that the joint pro­cure­ment would as­sist in ad­dress­ing sup­ply con­straints be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced.

“There would al­so be con­sid­er­a­tion of a pro­pos­al for a pro­to­col on re-open­ing bor­ders which all mem­ber states would ad­here to at the same time when such a de­ci­sion is tak­en,” the state­ment not­ed.

Re­gion­al gov­ern­ments have im­ple­ment­ed sev­er­al ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing lock­down of their bor­ders, cur­fews and so­cial dis­tanc­ing, in a bid to pre­vent the spread of the virus that has killed peo­ple in some Caribbean coun­tries no­tably, the Ba­hamas, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, Bermu­da, Suri­name and Guyana.

The state­ment said is­sues re­lat­ed to food se­cu­ri­ty would be con­sid­ered in the con­text of the CARI­COM COVID-19 Agri-Food Risk Man­age­ment Frame­work, which has been cir­cu­lat­ed to mem­ber states fol­low­ing a meet­ing of Min­is­ters of Agri­cul­ture last month. The state­ment said this would ad­dress in par­tic­u­lar the pro­duc­tion and sup­ply of food prod­ucts.

The trans­porta­tion of peo­ple and goods by air and sea in­ter-re­gion­al­ly would al­so come un­der scruti­ny with par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence to the op­er­a­tions of the re­gion­al air car­ri­ers which have been ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by the mea­sures adopt­ed to con­tain the virus.

Pro­pos­als would al­so be for­mu­lat­ed for build­ing a ro­bust dig­i­tal ar­chi­tec­ture, in­clud­ing gov­er­nance, to fa­cil­i­tate dig­i­tal com­merce and to as­sist in the fight against the virus, the state­ment said.

It added that the Coun­cil for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Law En­force­ment (CON­SLE), which met last Wednes­day, has been con­sid­er­ing the threats to se­cu­ri­ty dur­ing the course of the pan­dem­ic and that its rec­om­men­da­tions would al­so come be­fore the re­gion­al lead­ers at a lat­er date.

The state­ment said that dur­ing their vir­tu­al meet­ing, the re­gion­al lead­ers called for the lift­ing of sanc­tions on Cu­ba and Venezuela on hu­man­i­tar­i­an grounds as all coun­tries must be part of the glob­al ef­fort to com­bat the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“Heads of Gov­ern­ment were of the view that it was re­gret­table that re­sources for the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) were be­ing threat­ened at a time when all must join in lead­ing the fight against the pan­dem­ic,” the state­ment said. (CMC)