COVID-19 crises in In­dia and Brazil have now di­vert­ed any ex­cess vac­cines that the lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor was hop­ing to pur­chase.

Head of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT), Ra­jiv Diptee is now rec­om­mend­ing that the Gov­ern­ment utilise the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) to pay for the vac­cines.

In March, the pri­vate sec­tor, rep­re­sent­ed by ANSA McAL and SATT met with the Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to dis­cuss im­port­ing vac­cines pri­vate­ly.

“We be­lieve this coun­try has the re­sources by way of our HSF to com­pete ac­tive­ly for the ac­qui­si­tion of a min­i­mum of one mil­lion dos­es in the stride to­wards herd im­mu­ni­ty,” Diptee said.

In re­sponse to ques­tions on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Diptee said that the lat­est cor­re­spon­dence from the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Health re­quired that the pri­vate sec­tor need­ed to “de­scribe who is our WHO (World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion)-ap­proved sup­pli­er of the vac­cine, the agent re­spon­si­ble for the ac­qui­si­tion and the ad­min­is­tra­tion of vac­cines,” he said.

Diptee said these de­tails are re­quired de­spite the “very de­tailed de­ploy­ment plan al­ready laid out for on the ground lo­gis­tics in terms of re­ceiv­ing, dis­trib­ut­ing and ad­min­is­ter­ing vac­cines all rel­e­vant pro­to­cols ob­served”.

Diptee said that ac­cess­ing the vac­cines pri­vate­ly is now “dif­fi­cult, not im­pos­si­ble”.

“It is very dif­fi­cult to find an avail­able sup­ply,” he said.

He said that the pri­vate sec­tor al­so not­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s ‘ap­petite’ for col­lab­o­ra­tive pri­vate sec­tor in­volve­ment “as this is an in­di­ca­tion to us there can be a strat­e­gy for a par­al­lel vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme”.

“As re­port­ed to­day (yes­ter­day), we note El Sal­vador, a tiny Cen­tral Amer­i­can na­tion, has pur­chased 4.4 mil­lion dos­es from Pfiz­er by agree­ing to trans­act that sale,” he said, adding that the HSF could be utilised by the State to make the pur­chase.

Diptee said that as the coun­try faces an­oth­er lock­down, “it must be not­ed that con­sumer con­fi­dence has hit an all-time low”.

“The so­cial com­men­tary of vax-nomics, with stop-start clo­sures of busi­ness­es, has be­come a ram­bling cliche as grass­roots folk pon­der their next payslip,” he said.

“The prog­no­sis of un­cer­tain­ty is re­flect­ed in the per­pet­u­al in­ter­changes of reg­u­la­tions ad nau­se­am. Vac­cine suc­cess is no in­di­ca­tor of eco­nom­ic suc­cess; how­ev­er, the mar­riage of both are deeply in­ter­twined to give any pre­scrip­tion of hope to our na­tion,” Diptee said.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed ANSA McAL group Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er Sharon Bal­roop yes­ter­day for an up­date and was told that there was “noth­ing to re­port on it or any up­dates at this time”.

Bal­roop said that if the sit­u­a­tion changes or if the com­pa­ny had a state­ment, they would up­date the pub­lic through the me­dia.