The Gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ment that it was go­ing to re­ceive a gift of 40,000 As­traZeneca vac­cines from the gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of In­dia and an­oth­er 100,000 Sinopharm vac­cines from Chi­na is a wel­come de­vel­op­ment.

Vac­ci­na­tion of the pub­lic is seen all over the world as the means by which we will emerge from the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.

While mask-wear­ing, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and spe­cial at­ten­tion to hy­giene play a role in mit­i­gat­ing the trans­mis­sion of the virus, it is not the so­lu­tion.

The present school of thought is that the so­lu­tion to COVID-19 and the dele­te­ri­ous ef­fect it is hav­ing on lives and liveli­hoods is to de­vel­op herd im­mu­ni­ty through suf­fi­cient vac­ci­na­tion of glob­al pop­u­la­tions.

No one can de­ny that this coun­try is be­hind the eight-ball as it re­lates to vac­ci­na­tion.

Per capi­ta, we are last in the re­gion in vac­ci­na­tion and to date, not even our front­line work­ers, se­niors, or med­ical staff have been suf­fi­cient­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

When you com­pare this re­al­i­ty to oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion that have re­ceived vac­cines due to the gen­eros­i­ty of the peo­ple of In­dia, what is emerg­ing more and more are the mis­steps of the Gov­ern­ment in the pro­cure­ment of the vac­cines.

We are pleased that the coun­try is fi­nal­ly poised to re­ceive 140,000 vac­cines but so much of what has been said re­quires more scruti­ny.

Nowhere in the an­nounce­ment on the ini­tia­tive re­vealed when the vac­cines are go­ing to be here or an ap­prox­i­mate date. This is a ma­jor is­sue since we have had so many promis­es from Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, on­ly for him to con­stant­ly re­vise the dates and the amount we are to re­ceive.

We are yet to re­ceive any vac­cines oth­er than those do­nat­ed by the gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos to T&T. That do­na­tion was al­so the sub­ject of con­tro­ver­sy, with the Min­is­ter of Health mis­s­peak­ing about where the do­na­tion came from.

The un­seem­ly back and forth be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the High Com­mis­sion­er of In­dia to T&T was al­so re­gret­table and we are hap­py that good sense has pre­vailed and mere days af­ter a meet­ing be­tween the High Com­mis­sion­er and the For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter, the vac­cines that we were told were not avail­able are now com­ing.

There is al­so the is­sue sur­round­ing the ac­cep­tance of the Chi­nese vac­cine, which has not yet been ap­proved by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion for emer­gency use.

One of the ini­tial rea­sons the Gov­ern­ment gave for its re­luc­tance to ac­cept the In­di­an-pro­duced As­traZeneca vac­cine was be­cause it was then yet to be ap­proved by the WHO.

That the Gov­ern­ment is now say­ing it is putting in place arrange­ments to bring in the Chi­nese vac­cines that are them­selves await­ing WHO ap­proval for emer­gency use, ap­pears to be at best flawed.

Maybe one can come to the con­clu­sion that they have learned lessons from the process and the Gov­ern­ment wants to get its or­der for the vac­cines in pend­ing WHO ap­proval.

So yes there are some signs of hope but more needs to be done and more ques­tions re­main to be an­swered.

We thank the two gov­ern­ments for their as­sis­tance and our ac­cep­tance shows that help is not al­ways about beg­ging.