The im­pact of COVID-19 on Cari­com coun­tries is “front of mind” for the Unit­ed States as it works on the dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels for the 80 mil­lion vac­cines it do­nat­ed for use to poor­er and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries.

The Unit­ed States will share 60 mil­lion As­traZeneca vac­cines, which is not ap­proved for use in that coun­try and an­oth­er 20 mil­lion from the US ap­proved vac­cines which in­clude John­son & John­son, Mod­er­na and Pfiz­er.

The Brus­sels Re­gion­al Me­dia Hub yes­ter­day host­ed a me­dia brief­ing with US Co­or­di­na­tor Gayle Smith on the US sup­port to the glob­al pan­dem­ic to ex­pound on the vac­cine gift it was pro­vid­ing.

Smith is the co­or­di­na­tor of the glob­al COVID re­sponse and health se­cu­ri­ty at the US De­part­ment of State.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day con­firmed that the rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Em­bassy in Wash­ing­ton were ex­pect­ed to meet with Smith yes­ter­day to dis­cuss the vac­cines.

“The sit­u­a­tion across the CARI­COM coun­tries and in Latin Amer­i­ca has been front-of-mind, I think for the Unit­ed States, giv­en that this is in our hemi­sphere,” Smith said yes­ter­day.

“We are look­ing at all re­gions giv­en the con­straints in vac­cine sup­plies every­where and we have not made a fi­nal de­ci­sion,” she said of the dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Smith said she met with sev­er­al Cari­com and Latin Amer­i­can rep­re­sen­ta­tives about the vac­cine short­age.

“But I can tell you that we are look­ing close­ly at every re­gion,” she said.

On Mon­day, the Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al of the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) Dr Tedros Ad­hanom said that ac­cord­ing to Unicef there is a “huge short­fall in vac­cine sup­ply to CO­V­AX” pro­ject­ed.

Ad­hanom said then that the surge in cas­es had com­pro­mised glob­al vac­cine sup­ply and there was al­ready a short­fall of 190 mil­lion dos­es to CO­V­AX by the end of June.

Smith ad­dressed those con­cerns.

“Look, our com­mit­ment on dose-shar­ing is, we think, a very bold one but we are not sug­gest­ing that this is go­ing to solve all the prob­lems. So, again, our work on the sup­ply side, al­so our work with part­ners, is all aimed at do­ing as much as we can as quick­ly as we can to start to close those gaps,” she said.

“And we share the con­cern about the short­falls for CO­V­AX, which is why we are al­so work­ing with oth­er coun­tries and en­cour­ag­ing many oth­er coun­tries to put much more fi­nanc­ing on the ta­ble for CO­V­AX,” she said.

This coun­try signed with CO­V­AX last year and was ex­pect­ed to re­ceive 100,800 dos­es which were sub­se­quent­ly bro­ken up in­to three tranch­es of 33, 600.

Two of those tranch­es were re­ceived but a de­liv­ery date for the third has not yet been es­tab­lished.

In April, the US promised to do­nate 60 mil­lion vac­cines but that was up­end­ed when the batch be­came taint­ed and un­fit for use.

At that time Browne said that T&T would ben­e­fit from the US largesse but that in talks with US rep­re­sen­ta­tives, they were look­ing for an al­ter­na­tive route to the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty which was al­ready high­ly strained.

How­ev­er, Smith said that the CO­V­AX may be the main op­tion.

“We are con­sult­ing close­ly with CO­V­AX, which as you know is the largest vac­cine de­liv­ery plat­form in the world and is fo­cused on par­tic­u­lar low in­come and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries and with our part­ners to start to ini­ti­ate a process to get the glob­al cov­er­age we need,” she said.

“We are very strong sup­port­ers of CO­V­AX,” Smith said, adding that the US made a $2 bil­lion con­tri­bu­tion to that fa­cil­i­ty.

"Which puts us out front as the pri­ma­ry donor, we are in touch with them co­or­di­nat­ing with them and of course we look at CO­V­AX as an ab­solute­ly crit­i­cal and es­sen­tial plat­form for al­lo­ca­tion," Smith said.

"We are look­ing at how we can get max­i­mum cov­er­age," Smith said.

"Our view when it comes to vac­cine diplo­ma­cy, and I think a re­al­ly im­por­tant point here is that vac­cines are tools for pub­lic health, they are the means for bring­ing this pan­dem­ic to an end, we do not see them and would not use them as means for pres­sure and our de­ci­sions would be made on the ba­sis of pub­lic health da­ta and col­lab­o­ra­tion with key part­ners, ab­solute­ly in­clud­ing CO­V­AX," she said.

"We're con­fi­dent that CO­V­AX is un­der­tak­ing a clear sci­ence and data­base al­lo­ca­tion of vac­cines, cur­rent­ly we are work­ing with them so that they could in­crease their own sup­ply to meet crit­i­cal tar­gets," she said.

"Now that's on­ly one part of our strat­e­gy on vac­cines, as we all know sup­ply is a very big is­sue and we need many more vac­cines for coun­tries all over the world," Smith said.

"We are work­ing with pro­duc­ers on in­creas­ing the sup­ply and al­so the sup­ply chain," she said.

Smith said that the com­po­nent parts that are used to cre­ate the vac­cine are in short sup­ply.

"We are work­ing to in­crease pro­duc­tion," she said.

Smith said that the US was al­so work­ing on its De­vel­op­ment Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion (DFC) to make in­vest­ments in man­u­fac­tur­ing sites around the world with a cap­i­tal in­jec­tion.

"The vac­cine strat­e­gy is part of a broad­er strat­e­gy for the Unit­ed States. As you know it is crit­i­cal to en­sure that there is vac­cine uptick, but al­so the di­ag­nos­tics, im­por­tant­ly test­ing, ther­a­peu­tics and oth­er sup­plies are avail­able," she said.

Smith said that over a bil­lion dol­lars have been al­lo­cat­ed for that ef­fort.

The As­traZeneca vac­cine has World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­proval but is not ap­proved for use in the US. Smith said that be­fore it need­ed FDA clear­ance be­fore it could be shipped to en­sure its safe­ty.

"We haven't made de­ci­sions on al­lo­ca­tions yet, we are look­ing lit­er­al­ly all over the globe with part­ners and with Co­v­ax to see what the most ef­fec­tive al­lo­ca­tion of these dos­es would be," she said.