At present, the dai­ly num­ber of pos­i­tive cas­es and deaths in this coun­try has be­come an alarm­ing and fright­en­ing sit­u­a­tion amongst the re­spon­si­ble peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

How­ev­er, while the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion con­tin­ue to play the blame game, al­most 400 cit­i­zens have lost their bat­tle with the COVID-19 virus dur­ing the month of May alone. Some say it was the East­er week­end in To­ba­go, whilst oth­ers are blam­ing the An­drea Bharatt can­dle­light vig­il. As this tit-for-tat con­tin­ues in the Par­lia­ment, press and on so­cial me­dia, the po­lice con­tin­ue to de­tain Venezue­lans cross­ing our bor­ders il­le­gal­ly and lock­ing up peo­ple for hold­ing COVID par­ties dur­ing a State of Emer­gency.

None of these ex­pla­na­tions sub­stan­ti­ates the spread of the virus or the rapid in­crease in its num­bers. No one re­al­ly knows when this pan­dem­ic will end. My ad­vice to all is to fol­low the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­istry of Health to wear your masks, wash and san­i­tize your hands, and prac­tice so­cial dis­tanc­ing. I would al­so add eat­ing healthy food and tak­ing vi­t­a­mins and sup­ple­ments to boost your im­mune sys­tem.

The COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic has brought with it three chal­lenges:

1. Try­ing to curb the spread of the virus and sav­ing lives by lock­ing down the coun­try, wear­ing of masks, wash­ing hands, and so­cial dis­tanc­ing.

2. A slow­ing down of the econ­o­my that has re­sult­ed in re­duced rev­enues, loss of jobs and low­er pro­duc­tion and avail­abil­i­ty of goods.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley

Suzanne Sheppard

3. Chil­dren are no longer at­tend­ing schools or so­cial­is­ing, mix­ing, and play­ing with each oth­er. They are now study­ing on­line at home. Cit­i­zens can no longer at­tend fu­ner­als, wed­dings, and birth­day par­ties. Gath­er­ings are lim­it­ed to not more than five, bare­ly a fam­i­ly in most cas­es. Hu­man­ism has been tak­en away from hu­man lives. This, my fel­low cit­i­zens, is a very se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion that can have a long-last­ing ef­fect on not on­ly our chil­dren’s minds and lives, but on all of us as hu­man be­ings.

De­spite the fore­go­ing, it is clear that the re­al long-term so­lu­tion to over­com­ing the chal­lenges caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and its ef­fect on our coun­try is the vac­ci­na­tion of our pop­u­la­tion. This seems to be the on­ly way to re­duce the num­ber of cas­es so that the peo­ple of T&T will have the con­fi­dence and the abil­i­ty to re-es­tab­lish con­tact with each oth­er and with the wider world.

I per­son­al­ly await­ed the Sinopharm vac­cine from Chi­na since my re­search in­di­cates that it is one of the bet­ter vac­cines. Chi­na be­gan its use in Oc­to­ber 2020, ahead of the phase three tri­al re­sults, giv­ing the vac­cine to near­ly a mil­lion peo­ple in Chi­na, in­clud­ing their sol­diers, un­der an emer­gency pro­gramme.

As a mat­ter of fact, this vac­cine was cre­at­ed us­ing well-known es­tab­lished tech­nol­o­gy and can be stored un­der much milder tem­per­a­tures. Af­ter a do­na­tion of 600,000 vac­cines for the Chi­nese cit­i­zens in Sri Lan­ka, there were no com­plaints from those re­ceiv­ing the jab. I trust and hope that it will have a sim­i­lar re­cep­tion and ef­fect here.

In or­der to put a quick end to this pan­dem­ic, it is im­por­tant and es­sen­tial that the Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor work to­geth­er to ex­pand and ac­cel­er­ate the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme to ex­tend it to every cit­i­zen and res­i­dent of this land. The Gov­ern­ment and the pub­lic health sys­tem can­not do it on their own. It must be a na­tion­al ef­fort! I am cer­tain that there are nu­mer­ous pri­vate med­ical fa­cil­i­ties, doc­tors’ of­fices and phar­ma­cies that would be will­ing to part­ner with the Min­istry of Health and the pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ties in these ex­tra­or­di­nary times to of­fer and ad­min­is­ter the vac­cines free of charge to the peo­ple of T&T.

It is hoped that the ac­cel­er­a­tion of the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme would al­low the Prime Min­is­ter and his med­ical team to re­vise their pol­i­cy on the clo­sure of the bor­der to al­low peo­ple who are vac­ci­nat­ed to trav­el to and from T&T with­out the need to quar­an­tine for a pro­longed pe­ri­od of time. This would al­low many of our cit­i­zens and vac­ci­nat­ed vis­i­tors to trav­el back and forth to un­der­take the vi­tal busi­ness ne­go­ti­a­tions and to es­tab­lish the im­por­tant com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ships that will be need­ed to catal­yse the re­open­ing and re-en­er­gis­ing of the econ­o­my in a safe way.

Per­mit me, my fel­low cit­i­zens of T&T, to call on all of us to come to­geth­er to pro­cure, ac­quire and dis­trib­ute the vac­cines that will be need­ed to stop the rapid growth of pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es here. Our coun­try is in a dif­fi­cult state. This pan­dem­ic has reached our fam­i­lies, friends, neigh­bours, and co-work­ers. It has im­pact­ed both the poor and the rich. Every life is im­por­tant and one life lost is too many. Let us pull to­geth­er our re­sources to save lives, re-en­er­gise the econ­o­my and al­low our peo­ple to re­turn to a sense of nor­mal­cy. We can do this if we all come to­geth­er. The on­ly so­lu­tion is “Vac­cine, Vac­cine, Vac­cine!”

God bless our na­tion.

Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj

CEO, ADM Im­port and Ex­port Dis­trib­u­tors Ltd