Pe­ter Christo­pher

Chi­na’s am­bas­sador to T&T Fang Qiu is urg­ing peo­ple to fol­low the sci­ence as he seeks to counter mis­in­for­ma­tion be­ing shared about the Sinopharm vac­cine.

Some 100,000 dos­es of the vac­cine are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in T&T next Tues­day.

In a let­ter to the peo­ple of T&T, Fang Qiu said, “At this cru­cial point where sci­ence and rea­son should be lead­ing the way, any kind of politi­ci­sa­tion and stig­ma­ti­sa­tion of vac­cines should be op­posed, as this “po­lit­i­cal virus” can cost lives just as the Covid-19 virus does and even worse. At this crit­i­cal mo­ment where self­less ser­vice should be pre­vail­ing, any kind of po­lit­i­cal reck­on­ing out of self-in­ter­est should be op­posed, as what­ev­er we do we should do it for the peo­ple’s greater good.”

He con­tin­ued, “I al­so note with pity that, ei­ther be­ing mis­led by some west me­dia with “An­ti-Chi­na Syn­drome”, or hav­ing not done any fact-check­ing or field study, some peo­ple are see­ing Chi­na as what it was in the last cen­tu­ry, thus are jump­ing to neg­a­tive com­ments on Chi­na-re­lat­ed mat­ters. Over the past decades, Chi­nese peo­ple have brought about enor­mous progress on econ­o­my, en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, in­fra­struc­ture and many oth­er fronts. Such changes are tak­ing place every minute while I am writ­ing this.”

In the let­ter, Qiu con­firmed that Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley spoke via phone on March 16 and dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, vac­ci­na­tion co-op­er­a­tion was dis­cussed. The let­ter stat­ed that in that con­ver­sa­tion, “Chi­na re­it­er­at­ed its com­mit­ment to fa­cil­i­tat­ing vac­cines ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and an­ti-pan­dem­ic ef­forts for the well­ness and well-be­ing of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

This led to the do­na­tion of the vac­cines which are set to reach T&T next week.

The Chi­nese Am­bas­sador al­so used the let­ter to re-em­pha­sise that the Sinopharm vac­cine had been cleared by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion.

“On May 7, af­ter go­ing through all strin­gent as­sess­ment in­clud­ing an on-site in­spec­tions of its pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty, the Sinopharm Covid-19 vac­cine was ap­proved in­to Emer­gency Use List­ing (EUL) by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion for it to be rolled out glob­al­ly. As WHO Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al Dr Tedros said the Sinopharm vac­cine re­ceived WHO val­i­da­tion be­cause of its “safe­ty, ef­fi­ca­cy and qual­i­ty”.

“On the ba­sis of all avail­able ev­i­dence, the WHO recog­nis­es that this vac­cine ef­fi­ca­cy for symp­to­matic and hos­pi­talised dis­ease was es­ti­mat­ed to be 79 per cent, all age groups com­bined, and rec­om­mends it for adults 18 years and old­er,” Am­bas­sador Fang Qiu said.

He con­tin­ued, “Ac­tu­al­ly, even be­fore the WHO EUL ap­proval, this vac­cine has been au­tho­rised for use in 45 coun­tries/ju­ris­dic­tions and over 65 mil­lion dos­es have been ad­min­is­tered through var­i­ous emer­gency use pro­grams. Many heads of state or gov­ern­ment have pub­licly re­ceived jabs of this vac­cines, cast­ing votes of con­fi­dence in its safe­ty and ef­fi­ca­cy.”