Rishard Khan
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al of the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO), Dr Tedros Ad­hanom, has praised Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for his lead­er­ship in man­ag­ing the COVID-19 out­break in T&T.

His com­men­da­tion came dur­ing a WHO me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day morn­ing in Gene­va af­ter Dr Row­ley made a vir­tu­al con­tri­bu­tion. He was rep­re­sent­ing both T&T and the CARI­COM re­gion as its cur­rent chair­man.

"I would al­so like to recog­nise that Trinidad and To­ba­go—your coun­try—has done very well in this pan­dem­ic and this is be­cause of your lead­er­ship," the WHO’s Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al told Dr Row­ley.

Dr Tedros Adhanom, Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), as he congratulated Dr Rowley and T&T on managing the COVID-19 pandemic well. (Image courtesy WHO)

Dr Ad­hanom al­so cred­it­ed and com­mend­ed the suc­cess­ful man­age­ment of the out­break to the non-med­ical in­ter­ven­tions such as the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions and re­stric­tions.

"Giv­en with­out vac­cines, us­ing pub­lic health so­lu­tions, we can see from your own ex­pe­ri­ence that this virus can be con­trolled.  So, thank you so much for your lead­er­ship, Your Ex­cel­len­cy, and I wel­come your sol­i­dar­i­ty," he said to T&T’s PM.

The WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al al­so ex­pressed his plea­sure with the coun­try's first dos­es of the vac­cine be­ing ad­min­is­tered to health­care work­ers on Wednes­day.