The Caribbean’s fight against COVID-19 has just re­ceived a ma­jor fi­nan­cial boost from the Eu­ro­pean Union.

The Eu­ro­pean Union is pro­vid­ing a grant of 8 mil­lion eu­ro (US$8.6M) to help the Caribbean fight the coro­n­avirus out­break.

The grant it­self, will be im­ple­ment­ed by the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA), and over­all, is ex­pect­ed to help im­prove the de­tec­tion, sur­veil­lance, pre­ven­tion, con­trol and re­sponse to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial state­ment from the EU, the funds will be used to pur­chase COVID-19 test kits, masks and oth­er per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment, test­ing reagents, and oth­er ma­te­ri­als re­quired for coro­n­avirus test­ing. The grant al­so will in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty of re­gion­al coun­tries to car­ry out lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing for COVID-19, sup­port coro­n­avirus quar­an­tine and iso­la­tion pro­ce­dures, as well as con­tact trac­ing.

In ad­di­tion, the fund­ing will help sup­port lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing and epi­demi­ol­o­gy train­ing, strength­en sur­veil­lance at ports of en­try and sup­port and pro­mote the use of COVID-19 guide­lines and pro­to­cols among health pro­fes­sion­als.

With re­gard to CARPHA it­self, some of the fund­ing will go to­wards CARPHA hir­ing three ad­di­tion­al lab­o­ra­to­ry tech­nol­o­gists, to deal with the an­tic­i­pat­ed surge in de­mand for test­ing for the COVID-19 virus and al­so sup­port the main­te­nance of new and ex­ist­ing equip­ment.

Specif­i­cal­ly it will in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty of CARPHA and CARPHA Mem­ber States to re­spond to out­breaks of the COVID-19 virus, strength­en pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and be­hav­iour change pro­grammes on com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases, as well as strength­en re­gion­al co­or­di­na­tion and the in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty of CARPHA in prepar­ing for and re­spond­ing to pub­lic health emer­gen­cies.

The EU grant al­so is in­tend­ed to help fi­nance treat­ment and vac­cines when they be­come avail­able.