The High Com­mis­sion of In­dia in T&T has tak­en note of the con­tro­ver­sy around In­dia’s pos­si­ble vac­cine do­na­tion to T&T and the role of the High Com­mis­sion­er in it. The High Com­mis­sion would like to make the fol­low­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion:

1. In his In­de­pen­dence Day speech on Au­gust 15, 2020, In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di had said that In­dia was ready to mass-pro­duce COVID-19 vac­cines when sci­en­tists give the go-ahead.

In his speech to the 75th UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2020, he as­sured the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty that as the largest vac­cine-pro­duc­ing coun­try in the world, In­dia’s vac­cine pro­duc­tion and de­liv­ery ca­pac­i­ty would be used to help all hu­man­i­ty in fight­ing this cri­sis. Sub­se­quent­ly, both PM Mo­di and Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr S Jais­hankar, on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions, talked about the Vac­cine Maitri ini­tia­tive of In­dia. Me­dia, both In­di­an and in­ter­na­tion­al, re­port­ed ex­ten­sive­ly about this ini­tia­tive.

2. Fol­low­ing re­quests from var­i­ous heads of gov­ern­ments for the sup­ply of In­di­an-man­u­fac­tured vac­cines, the gov­ern­ment of In­dia start­ed the sup­ply on Jan­u­ary 20, 2021. To date, In­dia has sup­plied Covid vac­cines to 72 na­tions across ge­o­gra­phies. On Jan­u­ary 19, Prime Min­is­ter of Do­mini­ca Roo­sevelt Sker­rit wrote to PM Mo­di for a do­na­tion of vac­cines. His let­ter and sub­se­quent so­cial me­dia ex­changes are in the pub­lic do­main. The do­na­tion of As­traZeneca vac­cines ar­rived in Do­mini­ca on Feb­ru­ary 9, 2021.

3. On Feb­ru­ary 15, both Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and For­eign Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne reached out to the High Com­mis­sion­er sep­a­rate­ly to ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting As­traZeneca vac­cines from In­dia. To both, the High Com­mis­sion­er con­veyed two clear op­tions:

i. T&T gov­ern­ment can re­quest the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia (GOI) for a do­na­tion of vac­cine, for which a re­quest at the high­est lev­el to PM Mo­di might be con­sid­ered.

ii. T&T can di­rect­ly ex­plore a com­mer­cial pur­chase of the vac­cine from the Serum In­sti­tute of In­dia (SII). Since it is a com­mer­cial deal, GOI will have a min­i­mal role, on­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ing ex­port ap­proval. The rel­e­vant T&T au­thor­i­ty could en­ter in­to a com­mer­cial agree­ment with SII. A copy of the deal could be shared with the High Com­mis­sion so that we could help get ex­pe­di­tious ex­port ap­proval. High Com­mis­sion­er al­so made it clear that it will not be easy since there is a tremen­dous glob­al de­mand.

4. On Feb­ru­ary 16, the High Com­mis­sion re­ceived For­eign Min­is­ter Dr Browne’s let­ter to his coun­ter­part EAM Dr S Jais­hankar re­quest­ing as­sis­tance in ac­cess for pur­chase and re­ceipt of 250,000 dos­es of vac­cine from SII.

5. On Feb­ru­ary 23, the High Com­mis­sion­er was called to the For­eign Of­fice for a quick meet­ing. He was in­formed that SII was not tak­ing any com­mer­cial or­der at that time, and his as­sis­tance was sought in get­ting some vac­cine do­na­tion. High Com­mis­sion­er sug­gest­ed that, even though it is very late, T&T may like to make a re­quest for a do­na­tion at a suit­able lev­el. He al­so con­veyed that giv­en the his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al and friend­ly re­la­tions with the peo­ple and gov­ern­ment of T&T, but sub­ject to do­mes­tic de­mand and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments, we will go an ex­tra mile to make an ef­fort to get some vac­cines. He was told that a let­ter would be sent.

6. It may be men­tioned that peo­ple of var­i­ous walks of life meet the High Com­mis­sion­er to en­hance and strength­en eco­nom­ic, trade, cul­tur­al, ed­u­ca­tion­al and peo­ple-to-peo­ple con­tacts be­tween T&T and In­dia. Pro­fes­sion­als in the fields of med­i­cine and health care all over the world are well aware of the strength of In­dia in this sec­tor and the lat­est de­vel­op­ments. Many a time, it’s from them that the High Com­mis­sion­er learns, and not the oth­er way round. Like­wise, many T&T busi­ness­es seek High Com­mis­sion­er’s ad­vice on do­ing busi­ness with In­dia.

7. This is to re­call that last year, amid the pan­dem­ic, In­dia had sup­plied med­i­cines in­clud­ing hy­drox­y­chloro­quine and parac­eta­mol to 150 na­tions. All three coun­tries that this High Com­mis­sion is ac­cred­it­ed to, name­ly, Trinidad & To­ba­go, Grena­da and Com­mon­wealth Do­mini­ca, were sup­plied with these do­na­tions.

8. Keep­ing in view the long-stand­ing his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al and peo­ple-to-peo­ple con­tacts be­tween In­dia and Trinidad and To­ba­go, ef­forts are be­ing made to sup­ply some vac­cines to T&T. How­ev­er, no time frame could be in­di­cat­ed at this stage.