Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs, Sen­a­tor Amery Browne, has con­firmed the ar­rival and re­ceipt of the ship­ment of 108,000 WHO-ap­proved John­son & John­son COVID-19 vac­cines, via the African Med­ical Sup­plies Plat­form (AM­SP).

The vac­cines were brought in on an Amer­i­jet flight, which land­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port at 3:10 p.m. on Fri­day 20th Au­gust 2021.

On hand to re­ceive the ship­ment were: Sen­a­tor Dr. Amery Browne, Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs; Ter­rence Deyals­ingh MP, Min­is­ter of Health; As­sem­bly­man Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine, Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly; and Dr. Niki­ta Parde­si, So­cial Pol­i­cy Of­fi­cer at the UNICEF Of­fice for the East­ern Caribbean Area.

An of­fi­cial state­ment from the For­eign Min­istry quotes Min­is­ter Browne as point­ing out:

“…the crit­i­cal role played by the Ho­n­ourable Kei­th Row­ley, Prime Min­is­ter, in lead­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tions with key mem­bers of the African Union, in­clud­ing His Ex­cel­len­cy Cyril Ramaphosa, Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic of South Africa; His Ex­cel­len­cy Nana Aku­fo-Ad­do, Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic of Ghana; and His Ex­cel­len­cy Uhu­ru Keny­at­ta, Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic of Kenya to se­cure these vac­cines on be­half of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The Min­istry’s state­ment added:

“Min­is­ter Browne not­ed as well the vi­tal role played by the Unit­ed Na­tions Chil­dren’s Emer­gency Fund (UNICEF) in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the lo­gis­ti­cal arrange­ments for the de­liv­ery of these vac­cines, from the man­u­fac­tur­er in Bel­gium to Trinidad and To­ba­go. He al­so ac­knowl­edged the skil­ful diplo­ma­cy of Mr. Strive Masiyi­wa, Spe­cial En­voy of the African Union for COVID-19, in help­ing to bring this ini­tia­tive to fruition.”

The For­eign Min­istry says this pro­cure­ment of WHO-ap­proved John­son & John­son COVID-19 vac­cines by Gov­ern­ment is a ma­jor boost to the na­tion­al COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion roll­out, as it will be the first sin­gle dose vac­cine to be utilised in Trinidad and To­ba­go, which will al­low per­sons re­ceiv­ing it to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed two weeks af­ter re­ceipt of one dose of the vac­cine.

“This in­clu­sion of John­son & John­son vac­cines in the coun­try’s menu of avail­able vac­cines against the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic pro­vides the pop­u­la­tion with an ex­pand­ed range of COVID-19 vac­cines from which to choose,” the re­lease stat­ed, as it con­firmed that the Min­istry of Health will be uti­liz­ing these vac­cines with­in its na­tion­al vac­cine roll­out.