Renu­ka Singh

Chi­na is step­ping in to as­sist Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ac­cess to COVID-19 vac­cines.

The Chi­na-made vac­cine man­u­fac­tured by Sinopharm is cur­rent­ly await­ing the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­proval but ac­cess to it was dis­cussed dur­ing a vir­tu­al meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Chi­na Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­peng yes­ter­day.

Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne was al­so present at the meet­ing and said the dis­cus­sion was very pro­duc­tive.

“The meet­ing al­so in­clud­ed spe­cif­ic di­a­logue on COVID-19 and on on­go­ing ef­forts by both na­tions to con­trol the in­fec­tion and keep our re­spec­tive pop­u­la­tions safe,” Browne told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Browne said Pres­i­dent Xi thanked Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley “for our pro­vi­sion of a con­sign­ment of PPE to Chi­na ear­ly in the year 2020” and “took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­di­cate that Chi­na would re­spect­ful­ly as­sist our na­tion­al ef­forts to ac­cess ap­proved COVID-19 vac­cines in the near fu­ture.”

“Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley reaf­firmed the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of eq­ui­table ac­cess to ap­proved COVID-19 vac­cines for the peo­ple of our na­tion and re­gion and across the globe,” Browne said.

Browne said Chi­na’s Am­bas­sador here in T&T, Fang Qiu, had ”been an ex­cel­lent and proac­tive part­ner in work­ing with us to or­gan­ise and co­or­di­nate this im­por­tant meet­ing.”

“This morn­ing’s (yes­ter­day’s) dis­cus­sions were en­hanced by our strong his­to­ry of good re­la­tions with the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, and fur­ther en­hanced by the friend­ship en­joyed by the two Heads of Gov­ern­ment over the years,” he said.

He said both lead­ers al­so ac­knowl­edged the long­stand­ing bonds be­tween T&T and Chi­na, “and ex­plored op­por­tu­ni­ties to fur­ther ad­vance our bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion across a range of sec­tors.”

How­ev­er, Browne said plans to utilise the Chi­nese vac­cine were not new.

“The in­ten­tion has al­ways been to con­sid­er all avail­able vac­cines, de­pend­ing on avail­abil­i­ty and prospec­tive ap­proval by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion,” Browne said.

“This pol­i­cy takes in­to ac­count vac­cines that would be ap­proved in the fu­ture, as well as there are sev­er­al in de­vel­op­ment at this time as vac­cine sci­ence con­tin­ues to ad­vance.”

In­dia’s Serum In­sti­tute, which man­u­fac­tures the Ox­ford As­traZeneca, was grant­ed WHO ap­proval on Feb­ru­ary 15. Browne said dis­cus­sions for that vac­cine be­gan be­fore it was ap­proved but the or­der was on­ly placed af­ter the WHO ap­proval.

In­dia has been ship­ping and do­nat­ing that vac­cine through­out the world, giv­ing some 500,000 to Cari­com alone.

T&T is al­so part of the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty and is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive 33,600 vac­cines, one-third of the promised 108,000 with­in the next few days. Ja­maica was the first Caribbean coun­try to re­ceive its batch of 14,400 dos­es on Mon­day.

Yes­ter­day’s meet­ing comes weeks Row­ley wrote to In­dia Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di on Feb­ru­ary 23 on the is­sue of do­na­tions and pur­chase of vac­cines.

On Fri­day, Row­ley was asked for an up­date on the re­quest but said there was none to give.