An­na-Lisa Paul

Grow­ing ten­sions be­tween T&T and In­dia over the gift­ing of COVID-19 vac­cines to the CARI­COM re­gion end­ed yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment it would be do­nat­ing 40,000 dos­es of the WHO-ap­proved As­tra Zeneca vac­cine to this coun­try.

The do­na­tion came af­ter of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to the In­dia Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di and Mon­day’s meet­ing be­tween CARI­COM and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne and In­dia’s High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T Arun Ku­mar Sahu.

Along­side In­dia’s do­na­tion was an­oth­er gift from the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, which agreed to do­nate 100,000 dos­es of the Sinopharm vac­cine to T&T.

Fol­low­ing the gen­er­ous do­na­tion, a re­lease from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day said, “The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has gra­cious­ly ac­cept­ed this gen­er­ous of­fer of the Sinopharm vac­cine as we anx­ious­ly await WHO ap­proval.”

The re­lease ex­pressed Row­ley’s sin­cer­est ap­pre­ci­a­tion and grat­i­tude to Mo­di and Chi­na Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping for their gen­eros­i­ty to the peo­ple of T&T.

Al­though no dates on when the vac­cines will ar­rive were pro­vid­ed, the OPM as­sured, “All rel­e­vant arrange­ments are be­ing made for the ship­ment of the vac­cines to Port-of-Spain.”

Short­ly af­ter the an­nounce­ment by the OPM, Sahu is­sued a state­ment say­ing, “I feel proud that my coun­try, a civil­i­sa­tion of 5,000 years and the biggest democ­ra­cy in the world, has been able to ex­tend a hand of sup­port to the peo­ple and gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go in their fight against the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“I ex­press my deep­est grat­i­tude to my Prime Min­is­ter Shri Naren­dra Mo­di, the Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr S Jais­hankar and my col­leagues in the Min­istry of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs for mak­ing this pos­si­ble. There is tremen­dous good­will in In­dia for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the do­na­tion of As­tra Zeneca vac­cines is a clear re­it­er­a­tion of that long-stand­ing his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al, so­cial and friend­ly re­la­tions.”

Re­la­tions be­tween Row­ley and Sahu had grown tense in the last week, fol­low­ing re­marks by the T&T Prime Min­is­ter that Sahu had failed to com­mu­ni­cate the avail­abil­i­ty of COVID-19 vac­cines from In­dia to this coun­try.

Dur­ing last Thurs­day’s seg­ment of Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter in St Joseph, Row­ley claimed T&T had not been in­vit­ed to be part of any free vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­gramme in­volv­ing the pro­vi­sion of vac­cines from In­dia. He claimed the first time he learned of any vac­cines from In­dia was through lo­cal doc­tors who were spo­ken to by Sahu and the sec­ond time he heard of the Maitri vac­cines, which is In­dia’s glob­al out­reach ini­tia­tive, was through lo­cal busi­ness­men hop­ing to bring the vac­cines in­to T&T.

Row­ley was heav­i­ly crit­i­cised for re­port­ed­ly fail­ing to act quick­ly to se­cure T&T’s share of an of­fer of 500,000 vac­cines from In­dia to CARI­COM – an of­fer which the PM claimed has nev­er been con­firmed.

In Feb­ru­ary, Bar­ba­dos re­ceived 100,000 vac­cines from In­dia and out of that, it do­nat­ed 2,000 dos­es to T&T; 1,500 to Guyana; 1,000 to St Lu­cia and 500 to Grena­da.

In­dia al­so do­nat­ed 70,000 vac­cines to Do­mini­ca and 40,000 vac­cines to An­tigua and Bar­bu­da. Do­mini­ca shared 2,000 vac­cines with St Lu­cia; 5,000 with An­tigua and Bar­bu­da; 5,000 to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines; 2,000 to St Kitts and Nevis and 500 to Grena­da.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the vac­cine do­na­tion, Chi­na’s Am­bas­sador to T&T Fang Qui said Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping and Row­ley had com­mu­ni­cat­ed via phone on March 16, when the two ex­changed views and reached a con­sen­sus on vac­cine co­op­er­a­tion.

Qui said, “As a de­liv­er­able of this top-lev­el in­ter­ac­tion, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has worked in re­al earnest to de­cide on this do­na­tion in a very short pe­ri­od of time, to sup­port T&T for its ef­forts to safe­guard the health of its peo­ple. Chi­na will al­so fa­cil­i­tate with T&T’s pro­cure­ment of Chi­nese vac­cines. This is a new tes­ti­mo­ny to Chi­na and T&T stand­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty and broth­er­hood to fight against this pan­dem­ic.”

Qui added, “This do­na­tion is a con­crete ac­tion of im­ple­ment­ing Pres­i­dent Xi’s promise to the world that Chi­na’s vac­cines will be a glob­al pub­lic good, es­pe­cial­ly for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, to make Chi­na’s con­tri­bu­tion to vac­cines eq­ui­ty, ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and af­ford­abil­i­ty world­wide.

“Chi­na is walk­ing its talk on achiev­ing the vi­sion of build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty with a shared fu­ture for mankind and a glob­al com­mu­ni­ty of health for all.”

Qui said Chi­na has al­so pro­vid­ed an­ti-pan­dem­ic as­sis­tance to over 150 coun­tries and nine in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions.

“We did our ut­most to stand with the rest of the world in a joint fight, car­ry­ing out the largest emer­gency hu­man­i­tar­i­an op­er­a­tions since the found­ing of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na and mak­ing our con­tri­bu­tion to the glob­al pan­dem­ic re­sponse,” Qui said.

De­scrib­ing vac­cines as a pow­er­ful weapon to save lives, Qui ac­knowl­edged that “cer­tain coun­tries are ob­sessed with politi­cis­ing the virus, stig­ma­tis­ing oth­er na­tions and ma­nip­u­lat­ing vac­cines dis­tri­b­u­tions, while turn­ing back on their peo­ple suf­fer­ing, even dy­ing from the pan­dem­ic. Some coun­tries are hoard­ing large quan­ti­ties of vac­cines far over their ac­tu­al needs but re­fus­ing to pro­vide as­sis­tance to oth­er coun­tries, even their own al­lies.”

“We con­cur with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that all coun­tries should join forces to re­ject “vac­cine na­tion­al­ism,” “vac­cine di­vide” or any at­tempt to politi­cise vac­cine co­op­er­a­tion. We hope that all ca­pa­ble coun­tries will do what they can to pro­vide vac­cines to coun­tries in need, es­pe­cial­ly de­vel­op­ing coun­tries so that peo­ple all over the world will have ac­cess to af­ford­able vac­cines, vac­cines that tru­ly ben­e­fit the peo­ple. Chi­na stays keen­ly com­mit­ted to this cause,” Qui said.

Kam­la dis­turbed by CO­V­AX news

Dis­turbed by the lat­est news that the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty will not be able to de­liv­er COVID-19 vac­cines to T&T by the end of March as promised by the Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar says the do­na­tions from In­dia and Chi­na is great news.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “This Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion was last to en­ter talks with vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers and they were last to write to the gov­ern­ment of In­dia. Now our na­tion is last in the re­gion­al rank­ing of vac­ci­na­tions.”

She said while oth­er CARI­COM coun­tries con­tin­ue their vac­ci­na­tion roll-outs, T&T had been “left in lim­bo as to when we will be able to be­gin re­ceiv­ing vac­cines for our cit­i­zens.”

“This is an en­tire­ly un­for­giv­able sit­u­a­tion that places cit­i­zens in fur­ther per­il,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said

She al­so lashed out at Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh af­ter he re­fut­ed claims by busi­ness­es that they were ap­proached by him to help pur­chase vac­cines.

“The Min­is­ter is now say­ing the Gov­ern­ment is part­ner­ing with two lo­cal busi­ness groups to pur­chase vac­cines. He still can­not say when or in­deed if this will bear fruit,” she said.

For­mer min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie mean­while cel­e­brat­ed the an­nounce­ment.

“I am hap­py for the con­fir­ma­tion by the Prime Min­is­ter that do­na­tions of vac­cines have been re­ceived from In­dia. I am very hap­py that that will now put an end to the un­nec­es­sary con­flict over do­na­tions of In­di­an vac­cines,” Tewarie said.

He said if the 140,000 dos­es were two-dose vac­cines, this would mean 70,000 peo­ple would be vac­ci­nat­ed.

“If that is the case, we would be 70,000 peo­ple bet­ter than we were yes­ter­day, so I look for­ward to a suc­cess­ful vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve and a well-man­aged sys­tem of pri­or­i­ty groups to be vac­ci­nat­ed.”