The ANSA McAL Group's of­fer of COVID-19 vac­cines to its 6,000 em­ploy­ees and their im­me­di­ate fam­i­lies is a wel­come boost in ef­forts to cov­er the ma­jor­i­ty of Cari­com cit­i­zens at this crit­i­cal stage in the pan­dem­ic.

It is the type of pri­vate sec­tor col­lab­o­ra­tion with gov­ern­ments across the re­gion that is need­ed to de­feat the coro­n­avirus so there can be a re­sump­tion of nor­mal lev­els of ac­tiv­i­ty.

In ad­di­tion to work­ing in tan­dem with var­i­ous min­istries of health for the ac­qui­si­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of vac­cines in the var­i­ous ter­ri­to­ries where it op­er­ates, ANSA McAL is al­so ex­plor­ing op­tions for pur­chas­ing World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO)-ap­proved vac­cines on the open mar­ket through rep­utable phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies.

That will be no small un­der­tak­ing even for one of T&T’s largest con­glom­er­ates. ANSA McAL, the par­ent com­pa­ny of Guardian Me­dia, op­er­ates 73 com­pa­nies across the Caribbean, Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca and now plans to lever­age that reach and in­flu­ence for the health of the re­gion.

Since it is es­ti­mat­ed that it could take years for most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion to be im­mu­nized against COVID-19, es­pe­cial­ly with new strains of the coro­n­avirus pre­sent­ing greater chal­lenges, this is a much-need­ed boost for ef­forts al­ready be­ing un­der­tak­en across Cari­com.

Pri­vate sec­tor sup­port is what the re­gion needs to es­tab­lish ef­fi­cient dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works and achieve high vac­ci­na­tion rates with­in months rather than years.

It would cost just over US$1 bil­lion for the 15-mem­ber re­gion­al group­ing to pur­chase suf­fi­cient dos­es to in­oc­u­late its en­tire pop­u­la­tion of 18.5 mil­lion peo­ple.

Through the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty, Cari­com coun­tries will get vac­cines for just about 20-25 per cent of their pop­u­la­tions.

Most of the re­gion, T&T in­clud­ed, is on­ly in the pre­lim­i­nary stages of rolling out na­tion­al vac­ci­na­tion plans in an­tic­i­pa­tion of dos­es be­com­ing more wide­ly avail­able by the end of March.

Pub­lic health au­thor­i­ties in this coun­try have set an am­bi­tious tar­get of get­ting one mil­lion cit­i­zens vac­ci­nat­ed by the end of the year—well be­yond the 738,071 peo­ple that will need to be cov­ered to achieve herd im­mu­ni­ty in 75 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion.

What is re­quired, even be­fore the vac­cines al­lo­cat­ed through CO­V­AX ar­rive in the coun­try, is an un­prece­dent­ed lo­gis­ti­cal ef­fort that would be dif­fi­cult for most gov­ern­ments in the re­gion to ac­com­plish on their own.

That is why the in­put from ANSA McAL may yet prove to be so crit­i­cal for a suc­cess­ful re­gion­al re­sponse to COVID-19. Hope­ful­ly, oth­er pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ties will fol­low suit, giv­ing Cari­com mem­ber states more than a fight­ing chance to emerge ear­ly from the re­stric­tions of the pan­dem­ic.

This must, of ne­ces­si­ty, in­clude fund­ing for the ad­di­tion­al dos­es of vac­cine that will be need­ed. The most like­ly source of that sup­ply might be the Serum In­sti­tute of In­dia, the world's largest vac­cine pro­duc­er, which has been churn­ing out 2.4 mil­lion dos­es a day of the Ox­ford As­traZeneca vac­cines.

Like ANSA McAL, there are oth­er world-class com­pa­nies based in the re­gion with con­sid­er­able ex­per­tise and reach which have al­ready been proven suc­cess­ful in a range of com­mer­cial en­deav­ours. These re­sources can now be de­ployed to sup­port ef­forts to res­cue the coun­tries of Cari­com from this un­prece­dent­ed pub­lic health cri­sis.