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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Govt open to seeking COVID vaccines from pharmaceutical companies

by

Gail Alexander
1471 days ago
20210213
Covid vaccine

Covid vaccine

Marvin Smith

Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies may be ex­plored as a source for COVID-19 vac­cine sup­plies in ad­di­tion to the 100,000-120,000 vac­cines from the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty which T&T is get­ting since sup­plies still have to be sought from else­where.

In­di­cat­ing that last Fri­day in Par­lia­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment will ex­plore all au­tho­rised sources.

He was re­ply­ing to UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal’s query whether Gov­ern­ment has ap­proached phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies di­rect­ly for vac­cine sup­ply. Mooni­lal had al­so grilled Row­ley on sup­plies Bar­ba­dos has been gift­ed with by In­dia, Guyana’s vac­cine sup­ply and whether Gov­ern­ment had re­ject­ed any ap­proach from In­dia to give T&T vac­cines.

Row­ley had said he knew of no ap­proach from In­dia to give T&T vac­cines and no re­jec­tion. He said Bar­ba­dos last week sent 2,000 vac­cines to T&T out of the 50,000 they were gift­ed by In­dia.

On the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies query, Row­ley said giv­en that T&T was in line to get on­ly a por­tion of what is re­quired to bring the pop­u­la­tion up to the lev­el of vac­cines need­ed, “We’re ex­plor­ing all au­tho­rised sources avail­able and like oth­er coun­tries even as we’re get­ting our CO­V­AX quo­ta (avail­able to T&T), we have to look for oth­er sup­pli­ers else­where.”

He said the vac­cine arrange­ments were such that T&T couldn’t just go and take vac­cines and ac­cel­er­ate its place in the “line”.

But Row­ley added, “The in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket to­day is such that we have to be care­ful we’re deal­ing with au­tho­rised sources and that we get vac­cines as op­posed to place­bos.”

Row­ley said T&T has al­so been in talks with Chi­na since last Oc­to­ber 20 to source vac­cines from there and this is be­ing fol­lowed up. He was con­fi­dent T&T would ob­tain this.

On when the 2,000 dos­es do­nat­ed by Bar­ba­dos will be giv­en to the pop­u­la­tion, he said he wasn’t ad­vised of that and it was in the hands of the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer and Health Min­istry. He couldn't give a spe­cif­ic date when T&T's first vac­cine would be giv­en to a cit­i­zen as this coun­try has to wait un­til au­tho­rised to re­ceive vac­cines.

Row­ley said he could not't com­ment on Bar­ba­dos get­ting vac­cines from In­dia and the is­sue was viewed in a cer­tain way. He added that if oth­er coun­tries like Guyana were get­ting dif­fer­ent vac­cines, it had noth­ing to do with T&T.

On Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies bid for the Guaracara re­fin­ery, which was sub­mit­ted to Gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly, Row­ley said a debt man­age­ment re­port from Cor­po­ra­tion Sole (Fi­nance) on the is­sue will be sent to Cab­i­net next week for ex­am­i­na­tion. Pa­tri­ot­ic re­cent­ly sub­mit­ted a third bid, with as­sur­ances on its fi­nanc­ing.


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