RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The cur­rent COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve could be­come use­less in the fu­ture if there is no fair and eq­ui­table vac­ci­na­tion for all coun­tries of the world.

So said Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as he ad­dressed a sem­i­nar host­ed by the At­lantic Coun­cil on Fri­day.

Say­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis had cre­at­ed a debt cri­sis in the Caribbean, Dr Row­ley said it was im­por­tant to have fair, eq­ui­table and trans­par­ent ac­cess to vac­cines.

“Some of us, like Trinidad and To­ba­go, have grap­pled with col­lapse and fluc­tu­a­tions in en­er­gy and com­mod­i­ty prices. Crude de­clined by 23.9 per cent, nat­ur­al gas de­clined by 2.9 per cent in 2020. Our high food im­port bill cur­rent­ly stands at US$4.7 bil­lion and in­creas­ing and we al­so face the im­pacts of ex­treme weath­er sys­tems such as hur­ri­canes and floods,” he added.

The Prime Min­is­ter said vul­ner­a­ble na­tions have not been get­ting ac­cess to the COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tions.

“A re­al and present dan­ger is the emer­gence of new vari­ants which may or may not be neu­tralised by the vac­cines de­vel­oped to date. It is for this rea­son that the fair, trans­par­ent and eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of COVID-19 vac­cines is crit­i­cal­ly ur­gent. We ap­plaud Pres­i­dent Biden’s com­mit­ment to chan­nel US$4 bil­lion to the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty in the next two years and, the G7 pledge of US$4.3 bil­lion to de­vel­op and dis­trib­ute ef­fec­tive tests, treat­ments and vac­cines world­wide.  We too recog­nise that no coun­try can be safe un­til every coun­try is safe,” he said.

He not­ed that CARI­COM wants to work along­side the US and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners with­in a ro­bust mul­ti­lat­er­al frame­work to build back bet­ter to­geth­er and en­sure that no one is left be­hind. 

“On Feb­ru­ary 17, the Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al re­gret­ted that “just 10 coun­tries have ad­min­is­tered 75 per cent of all COVID-19 vac­cines…while, more than 130 coun­tries have not re­ceived a sin­gle dose,” Dr Row­ley re­vealed.

 He said, “We ap­plaud his re­solve to mo­bilise the en­tire UN ap­pa­ra­tus in sup­port of a Glob­al Vac­ci­na­tion Plan and to bring to­geth­er all those with the re­quired pow­er, ex­per­tise and pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ties to achieve this out­come.”

Dr Row­ley al­so said CARI­COM coun­tries ex­pect to re­ceive their first dos­es some­time around mid-March. 

“So far all that we have re­ceived are 170,000 dos­es gift­ed to a cou­ple of na­tions from the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia. Bar­ba­dos and Do­mini­ca who re­ceived these gifts gra­cious­ly shared them around to many of us. This was done by them even as oth­ers with mil­lions of dos­es that they can’t use im­me­di­ate­ly are re­fus­ing to make way for oth­ers at the man­u­fac­tur­ers,” he said.

 He not­ed that CARI­COM looks for­ward to work­ing with the US and oth­er part­ners to nav­i­gate glob­al eco­nom­ic chal­lenges. 

“CARI­COM is call­ing for a glob­al con­sid­er­a­tion of our pe­cu­liar chal­lenges.  We be­lieve the time is now for the use of a mul­ti­di­men­sion­al Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty In­dex for Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS) to sup­ple­ment the cur­rent, but in­her­ent­ly flawed, the cri­te­ri­on of GDP per capi­ta, to mea­sure de­vel­op­ment,” he said.