Gail Alexan­der

This coun­try has to await World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­proval for drugs such as an­tivi­ral Mol­nupi­ravir to treat COVID-19, but the Health Min­istry is ne­go­ti­at­ing with man­u­fac­tur­ers and sup­pli­ers in the event there’s ap­proval.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in­di­cat­ed this in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day as he replied to Op­po­si­tion queries, in­clud­ing from UNC MPs Lack­ram Bo­doe and Rishi Seecha­ran.

Row­ley said T&T was on­ly us­ing med­ica­tions, pro­to­cols and pro­ce­dures ap­proved by WHO and while it ap­pears the drugs re­ferred to by Bo­doe may have some po­ten­tial, “we’ll await ap­pro­pri­ate ap­proval for their use.”

In an­tic­i­pa­tion of ap­proval, he said the Health Min­istry is ne­go­ti­at­ing with man­u­fac­tur­ers and sup­pli­ers and if there’s WHO ap­proval for dis­tri­b­u­tion, Gov­ern­ment will be ready to tell the pub­lic as and when they be­come ap­proved for use.

He said it would be pre­ma­ture at this point to say how many dos­es would be or­dered.

On a sim­i­lar query about new COVID an­ti-vi­ral drugs from Mer­ck and Pfiz­er, Row­ley al­so said these weren’t WHO-ap­proved. How­ev­er, he said the Health Min­istry had reached out to Pfiz­er and is await­ing a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment to ne­go­ti­ate.

“We’re prepar­ing to use them once they be­come avail­able and cer­ti­fied,’’ he said.

Row­ley rep­ri­mand­ed Seecha­ran, who’d asked whether up­com­ing vac­cine dri­ves would not be like a “vac­cine fi­as­co” that oc­curred pre­vi­ous­ly.

Row­ley said the on­ly vac­cine fi­as­co that oc­curred “... Was when you and your friends tried to un­der­mine the vac­cine pro­gramme by telling peo­ple don’t use it, you have been a ma­jor un­der­min­er of our vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme!”

Seecha­ran called on Row­ley to with­draw that but Row­ley didn’t.

Gov­ern­ment is al­so await­ing the de­ci­sions and out­comes of the far-reach­ing Scot­land cli­mate change con­fer­ence which end­ed yes­ter­day.

Apart from last Sat­ur­day’s state­ment on T&T, he said once con­fer­ence out­comes are avail­able, an ap­pro­pri­ate de­tailed state­ment will be made in Par­lia­ment so the pub­lic can be “crys­tal clear on what we’re do­ing and have to do.’’

He said Gov­ern­ment knows it has to make cer­tain ad­just­ments and changes and some things, which he list­ed, were al­ready be­gin­ning but T&T will con­tin­ue with oil and gas once there’s an in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket for them.

Row­ley said share­hold­ers of At­lantic LNG Train 1 were ac­tive­ly en­gaged in how Train 1 will be op­er­a­tionalised or not.

As soon as an of­fi­cial po­si­tion is ob­tained, the pub­lic will be ad­vised of com­ple­tion of ne­go­ti­a­tions, he said.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon al­so said there are 16, 547 list­ed small/medi­um busi­ness­es and many more are un­reg­is­tered.

She list­ed mea­sures to deal with in­fla­tion from in­creased in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping and freight costs, adding the Coun­cil of Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment’s up­com­ing meet­ing will dis­cuss the mat­ter.