Carisa Lee

“You may hate the Gov­ern­ment but don’t hate Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

This was the re­sponse Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh had yes­ter­day for Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, af­ter she wrote to the In­dia Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di to ask for COVID-19 vac­cines.

He made the com­ment dur­ing the Min­istry of Health’s press con­fer­ence, say­ing he was dis­ap­point­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar had char­ac­terised T&T as “reel­ing from COVID-19.”

“I am so dis­ap­point­ed that as a for­mer prime min­is­ter she would seek to char­ac­terise this coun­try like that,” he said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­port­ed­ly wrote to Mo­di on Feb­ru­ary 23 seek­ing his in­ter­ven­tion via a vac­cine do­na­tion so this coun­try could com­bat its chal­lenges against the virus.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Deyals­ingh said a rolling sev­en-day av­er­age of five cas­es is not “reel­ing.”

Deyals­ingh said he al­so want­ed to clear up the sale of vac­cines by lo­cal dis­trib­u­tors. He said as of now, vac­cines brought in­to the coun­try through the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty do not pass through a third par­ty or lo­cal agent.

“The con­sign­ing for the vac­cine is the coun­try, PA­HO does not deal with in­di­vid­ual firms,” he said.

He said the nar­ra­tive be­ing put out by the Op­po­si­tion about fi­nanciers ac­quir­ing the vac­cines can scare man­u­fac­tur­ers or coun­tries away from deal­ing with T&T.

“You now have the com­pa­nies we are try­ing to deal with ask­ing us what kind of coun­try is T&T, they don’t want their rep­u­ta­tions dam­aged,” Deyals­ingh said.

“We want vac­cines here,” he con­tin­ued.

The Health Min­is­ter said just like in the past, vac­cines are con­signed to the min­istry and NIPDEC but there will come a time when it will be­come avail­able to lo­cal dis­trib­u­tors. He said the UNC’s ac­tions were not help­ful and asked Per­sad-Bisses­sar to be part of the so­lu­tion and not part of the prob­lem.