The US may utilise the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) and not the Co­v­ax fa­cil­i­ty to help dis­trib­ute some of the 60 mil­lion vac­cines it is shar­ing with small­er coun­tries.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne was on The Morn­ing Brew on Wednes­day to dis­cuss the de­ci­sion by the Unit­ed States to share its sur­plus vac­cines and de­tailed some of the talks cur­rent­ly go­ing on to utilise oth­er av­enues of dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Trinidad and To­ba­go signed on to the Co­v­ax fa­cil­i­ty last year and was ex­pect­ed to re­ceive 100,800 vac­cines. So far T&T has re­ceived 33,600 vac­cines from Co­v­ax, the bal­ance is ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered but there is no con­firmed de­liv­ery date yet.

“Our an­tic­i­pa­tion is that the USA would be util­is­ing oth­er means of get­ting these vac­cines more di­rect­ly to ar­eas of se­vere need,” he said.

“Co­v­ax has clear­ly hit some lim­i­ta­tions,” he said.

Browne said that Co­v­ax has not been able to ful­fil the vac­cine needS and he hoped that the US utilised the oth­er av­enues for vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion.

“There have been dis­cus­sions fo­cused on Carpha and iden­ti­fy­ing whether they can serve a role in fa­cil­i­tat­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion of vac­cines to the re­gion,” he said.

“That was an in­quiry ac­tu­al­ly from the US side. So there is some ex­plo­ration of some means out­side of Co­v­ax,” he said.

He said that one of the biggest chal­lenges in the fight against COVID-19 is the ac­qui­si­tion of vac­cines.

“It has been well recog­nised that these vac­cines are re­al­ly es­sen­tial to help coun­tries sta­bilise and bring the epi­dem­ic un­der con­trol and re­duce the risk of se­ri­ous ill­ness and death,” he said.

Browne said that he was “very pleased” with the an­nounce­ment that the US was go­ing to share 60 mil­lion of its vac­cine stash.

Browne said that there was been “sig­nif­i­cant fol­low-up” since that an­nounce­ment.

He said T&T need­ed to “be proud” of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for step­ping up the ac­qui­si­tion of vac­cines.

Browne said that Row­ley has been “one of the strongest and ear­li­est voic­es” on this stage to get vac­cines for the Caribbean.

Back in March, Row­ley high­light­ed that rich­er coun­tries were hoard­ing the vac­cines and even clog­ging up the man­u­fac­tur­ers so that less de­vel­oped coun­tries were un­able to get in the line to or­der vac­cines. One man­u­fac­tur­er, the Serum In­stitue of In­dia was so over-sub­scribed by larg­er coun­tries that it could not take any or­ders from small­er coun­tries like those be­long­ing to Cari­com.

“So the Prime Min­is­ter spoke with the Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al of the WHO (World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion) on a glob­al plat­form, he’s spo­ken to lead­ing US­Con­gressper­sons, he’s spo­ken at the At­lantic Fo­rum and a range of oth­er im­por­tant op­por­tu­ni­ties as a voice of ad­vo­ca­cy on be­half of Cari­com and on be­half of the peo­ple of this coun­try,” he said.

Row­ley al­so wrote di­rect­ly to US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden on March 19 ask­ing that sur­plus vac­cines be shared with small­er coun­tries.

Biden re­spond­ed di­rect­ly to Row­ley on April 1 say­ing that while his first oblig­a­tion was to the US pop­u­la­tion, once he was able, he would share the vac­cines.

Browne said that Row­ley al­so spoke to oth­er world lead­ers with spe­cif­ic re­quests for vac­cines.

“In fact the Prime Min­is­ter’s let­ter to Pres­i­dent Biden, he rec­om­mend­ed that the US utilis­es its ex­cess As­traZeneca vac­cines and such avail­able to Cari­com and coun­tries in our re­gion,” he said.