The fol­low­ing is an up­date from the Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs, con­cern­ing the ship­ment of John­son & John­son vac­cines for this coun­try.

The Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs is pleased to in­form the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty of the sched­uled ar­rival of 108,000 WHO-ap­proved John­son & John­son COVID-19 vac­cines, from the African Med­ical Sup­plies Plat­form (AM­SP), at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port at 7:00 p.m. on Thurs­day 19th Au­gust 2021.

This ship­ment of vac­cines is the first tranche out of an or­der of 800,000 made by Trinidad and To­ba­go through the AM­SP, with fur­ther tranch­es to fol­low as ad­di­tion­al sup­plies be­come avail­able.

The de­liv­ery of these John­son & John­son sin­gle dose vac­cines to Trinidad and To­ba­go at this time is the re­sult of in­ten­sive di­a­logue and diplo­ma­cy, led by Dr the Ho­n­ourable Kei­th Row­ley dur­ing his Chair­man­ship of CARI­COM with 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.

These dis­cus­sions, with fol­low-up by the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at, led to the in­clu­sion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and sev­er­al oth­er CARI­COM Mem­ber States on the AM­SP, through which Trinidad and To­ba­go and the re­gion are ac­cess­ing a sig­nif­i­cant sup­ply of COVID-19 vac­cines that would oth­er­wise not be avail­able to us on the open mar­ket.

The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues the ac­qui­si­tion of WHO-ap­proved COVID-19 vac­cines for the pop­u­la­tion, and the Min­istry of Health will be uti­liz­ing these vac­cines with­in its na­tion­al vac­cine roll­out.