Fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment by the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment that six mil­lion vac­cines will be dis­trib­uted to coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, the US Em­bassy’s Chargé d’Af­faires, Shante Moore is­sued the fol­low­ing state­ment:

“The Biden-Har­ris Ad­min­is­tra­tion an­nounced on June 3 that it is al­lo­cat­ing the first 25 mil­lion dos­es out of the 80 mil­lion dos­es the Unit­ed States has al­ready com­mit­ted to do­nat­ing by the end of June. 75 per­cent of these vac­cines, which will be a com­bi­na­tion of Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na, and John­son & John­son, will go to CO­V­AX to be de­liv­ered eq­ui­tably. The Unit­ed States will make the fi­nal se­lec­tion of where the vac­cines will go but 6 mil­lion dos­es will go to Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

The U.S. Em­bassy in Port of Spain has worked close­ly with re­gion­al coun­ter­parts, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and of­fi­cials in Wash­ing­ton D.C. to en­sure the re­gion would be in­clud­ed in this do­na­tion. This is an ex­am­ple of what we en­vi­sion as a strate­gic bi­lat­er­al part­ner­ship work­ing to­geth­er to ad­dress and re­solve is­sues of mu­tu­al im­por­tance to the Unit­ed States, Trinidad and To­ba­go, and the re­gion.

We are shar­ing these dos­es not to se­cure favours, ex­tract con­ces­sions, or pur­sue hid­den agen­das. We are not im­pos­ing con­di­tions the way oth­er coun­tries are do­ing. The vac­cines are be­ing do­nat­ed, free and clear. We are giv­ing them for a sin­gle pur­pose - to end the pan­dem­ic and save lives.

We are shar­ing these vac­cines, five times more than any oth­er coun­try has shared, to save lives and to lead the world in bring­ing an end to the pan­dem­ic, with the pow­er of our lead­er­ship, gen­uine con­cerns for hu­man­i­ty, and with our val­ues. And we will con­tin­ue to fol­low the sci­ence and work in close co­op­er­a­tion with our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic part­ners to co­or­di­nate a mul­ti­lat­er­al ef­fort, in­clud­ing through the G7.

Up to 25% of the 25 mil­lion vac­cine dos­es will be used to help coun­tries such as In­dia deal­ing with im­me­di­ate surges in a flex­i­ble man­ner. We are work­ing on the reg­u­la­to­ry and lo­gis­ti­cal is­sues of trans­port­ing the vac­cines and will pro­vide more coun­try-spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion soon.”