Gail Alexan­der

No coun­try in Cari­com is close to herd im­mu­ni­ty and a re­cent surge of cas­es has prompt­ed Cari­com to seek as­sis­tance from the US and UK on cer­tain ar­eas to deal with the sit­u­a­tion.

That was the out­come of an emer­gency Cari­com meet­ing of lead­ers yes­ter­day.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne at­tend­ed the vir­tu­al meet­ing which fo­cused on a re­gion­al re­sponse to the re­cent surge in in­fec­tions, hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions and deaths due to the virus across the Cari­com Com­mu­ni­ty.

A Cari­com state­ment on the meet­ing stat­ed lead­ers ex­pressed deep con­cern at the in­crease with “more than 100,000 new cas­es and 1400 deaths” (sic) be­tween Ju­ly 2021 and 12 Sep­tem­ber 2021.

They re­ceived an up­date on the pan­dem­ic from the Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA), Dr Joy St John. This not­ed that since the out­break in March 2020, the re­gion has seen more than 300,000 con­firmed cas­es with more than 6,700 deaths.

St John stressed that the per­cent­age of deaths was ex­ceed­ing­ly high among un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple with less than one per cent of deaths record­ed by peo­ple who were vac­ci­nat­ed.

Lead­ers ex­pressed dis­may at the rate of vac­ci­na­tion in the Com­mu­ni­ty and the sig­nif­i­cant in­ci­dence of vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy.

As of 3 Sep­tem­ber, ac­cord­ing to CARPHA, vac­cine cov­er­age in the Com­mu­ni­ty ranged from 58.7 per cent in Bermu­da to 0.1 per cent in Haiti. Lead­ers not­ed that no coun­try was close to herd im­mu­ni­ty.

Heads of Gov­ern­ment agreed to share ex­cess vac­cines, per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment and test kits. They al­so agreed to ap­proach the CO­V­AX Fa­cil­i­ty to grant the Com­mu­ni­ty an ex­emp­tion, which would al­low vac­cine dos­es from the Fa­cil­i­ty to be re­al­lo­cat­ed among mem­ber states.

Giv­en the crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, lead­ers met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Unit­ed States and the Unit­ed King­dom to con­vey the grav­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion, and to make spe­cif­ic re­quests for as­sis­tance.

They re­quest­ed that the US de­liv­er the next batch of Pfiz­er vac­cines do­nat­ed to the re­gion ear­li­er than orig­i­nal­ly planned and asked for field hos­pi­tals and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing equip­ment to help ease the cur­rent strain on health fa­cil­i­ties in mem­ber states.

The re­quest to the Unit­ed King­dom cen­tred around the neg­a­tive im­pact of traf­fic-light list­ing of coun­tries which de­ter­mines re­quire­ments for re-en­try to the UK giv­en the im­por­tance of that tourism mar­ket to the re­gion.

Lead­ers are al­so strong­ly urg­ing peo­ple of the Cari­com com­mu­ni­ty to get vac­ci­nat­ed, as fail­ure to do so puts the health sec­tor at great risk of be­ing over­whelmed by the surge of cas­es.

They called par­tic­u­lar­ly on front­line work­ers - nurs­es, doc­tors, se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel and teach­ers - to avail them­selves of the vac­cines giv­en their crit­i­cal roles.

Lead­ers warned that the threat to the health, eco­nom­ic, ed­u­ca­tion and se­cu­ri­ty sec­tors was re­al, and called on all stake­hold­ers to come to­geth­er on the is­sue in the in­ter­est of the sta­bil­i­ty of mem­ber states and the Com­mu­ni­ty.

In this con­text, lead­ers will con­sid­er the har­mon­i­sa­tion of trav­el pro­to­cols, in­clud­ing for cruise ships. Lead­ers agreed to the de­sign of a Com­mu­ni­ty Pub­lic Re­la­tions Strat­e­gy to sup­ple­ment na­tion­al cam­paigns to en­cour­age cit­i­zens to vac­ci­nate.

Row­ley’s ex­pect­ed to speak about na­tion­al is­sues in­clud­ing pos­si­bly COVID, at a PNM vir­tu­al pub­lic meet­ing Tues­day night.