Cana­da’s Min­is­ter of In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Ka­ri­na Gould, yes­ter­day an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da will share over 82,000 dos­es of the As­traZeneca vac­cine to Trinidad and To­ba­go via a bi­lat­er­al agree­ment.

These are dos­es that had al­ready ar­rived in Cana­da, but are in ex­cess of our do­mes­tic needs.

Gould ex­plained that Trinidad and To­ba­go was se­lect­ed to re­ceive these dos­es based on need and the coun­try’s ca­pac­i­ty to de­ploy them im­me­di­ate­ly, min­i­miz­ing wastage, and max­i­miz­ing the pub­lic health im­pact.

She said the ex­cess dos­es will be de­liv­ered to T&T in the com­ing days, and the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go will man­age the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the vac­cines in ac­cor­dance with man­u­fac­tur­ing guide­lines and pub­lic health best prac­tices.

Gould said vac­ci­nat­ing the world against COVID-19 is our best chance of end­ing the acute phase of the pan­dem­ic, be­cause no one is safe un­til we are all safe and Cana­da is com­mit­ted to do­ing itspart to sup­port eq­ui­table ac­cess to safe and ef­fec­tive COVID-19 vac­cines around the world, in­clud­ing sup­port­ing our re­gion­al part­ners in the Caribbean that have felt the im­pacts of the pan­dem­ic acute­ly.

Cana­da’s prime min­is­ter Justin Trudeau an­nounced at the G7 Sum­mit on June 13, 2021, Cana­da’s $1.3 bil­lion con­tri­bu­tion to the ACT Ac­cel­er­a­tor, as part of the $2.5 bil­lion that it has con­tributed to the glob­al fight against the virus, is help­ing to pro­vide 87 mil­lion vac­cine dos­es to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so an­nounced an ini­tial com­mit­ment to share 13 mil­lion dos­es via CO­V­AX. On Ju­ly 12, 2021, Cana­da an­nounced that it would be shar­ing an ad­di­tion­al 17.7 mil­lion dos­es. These dos­es, dis­trib­uted via the CO­V­AX Ad­vance Mar­ket Com­mit­ment (AMC), will help ac­cel­er­ate de­liv­er­ies to low and low­er mid­dle-in­come coun­tries in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca, while al­so help­ing pri­or­i­ty coun­tries in oth­er re­gions.

Cana­da will al­so con­tin­ue to pri­or­i­tize the de­liv­ery of any po­ten­tial ex­cess dos­es through the CO­V­AX AMC, as well as ex­plor­ing oth­er dose shar­ing op­tions, as need­ed, to en­sure vac­cines get to those in need.

Cana­da is al­so match­ing, dol­lar for dol­lar, do­na­tions made by in­di­vid­ual Cana­di­ans to UNICEF Cana­da’s COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion fundrais­ing cam­paign, up to a max­i­mum of $10 mil­lion. (source gob­al af­fairs cana­da)