The Unit­ed States has an­nounced plans to pro­vide US$1.5 mil­lion in COVID-19 as­sis­tance through the Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US­AID) for coun­tries in the East­ern Caribbean re­gion in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go. Ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease from the US Em­bassy the as­sis­tance will be fo­cused on help­ing coun­tries with vac­cine de­ploy­ment and readi­ness, and in­cludes ef­forts to ad­dress vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy and com­bat vac­cine mis- and dis-in­for­ma­tion.

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from the US Em­bassy:

The Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment to­day an­nounced plans to pro­vide US$1.5 mil­lion in COVID-19 as­sis­tance through the Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US­AID) for coun­tries in the East­ern Caribbean re­gion in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, The Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, and Suri­name.

This as­sis­tance will be fo­cused on help­ing coun­tries with vac­cine de­ploy­ment and readi­ness, and in­cludes ef­forts to ad­dress vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy and com­bat vac­cine mis- and dis-in­for­ma­tion. The ad­di­tion­al sup­port will as­sist with com­mu­ni­ty vac­ci­na­tion cam­paigns and en­gage­ment ac­tiv­i­ties, strength­en the cold chain en­vi­ron­ment, train health­care work­ers, and de­vel­op re­gion­al and coun­try-spe­cif­ic cam­paigns to in­crease vac­cine up­take.

Lo­cal, re­gion­al, and in­ter­na­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tions such as the lo­cal Min­istries of Health, lo­cal non-gov­ern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tions, the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA), the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO), UNICEF, and the US­AID Coun­try Health In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems and Da­ta Use (CHISU) project will im­ple­ment the ac­tiv­i­ties.

U.S. Em­bassy Chargé d’Af­faires Shante Moore said, “This fund­ing comes at an op­por­tune time to in­crease the vac­ci­na­tion cov­er­age of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We are en­cour­aged to see that slight­ly more than 50 per­cent of the Trin­bag­on­ian pop­u­la­tion has now been ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, but we need to do more to in­crease the num­bers.”

US­AID Re­gion­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the East­ern and South­ern Caribbean Clin­ton D. White said, “The fund­ing will fill key gaps to ac­cel­er­ate COVID-19 vac­cine up­take, and strength­en coun­tries’ pre­pared­ness for fu­ture pan­dem­ic threats.”

This ad­di­tion­al as­sis­tance builds on pre­vi­ous COVID-19 sup­port to Caribbean coun­tries. US­AID has pro­vid­ed near­ly US$63 mil­lion in COVID-19 as­sis­tance to the Caribbean to ad­dress the health, hu­man­i­tar­i­an, and eco­nom­ic im­pacts of COVID-19. This in­cludes more than US$7 mil­lion specif­i­cal­ly for the East­ern and South­ern Caribbean re­gion since the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic.

As­sis­tance to Trinidad and To­ba­go fund­ed am­bu­lance retro­fitting to sup­port vac­ci­na­tion ac­tiv­i­ties, hand san­i­tiz­er units at health fa­cil­i­ties and ports of en­try, and COVID-19 mes­sag­ing across the coun­try.