Renu­ka Singh

There is no agree­ment yet be­tween T&T and In­dia for ei­ther the pur­chase or do­na­tion of Ox­ford-As­traZeneca Co­v­ishield vac­cines. This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Arun Ku­mar Sahu who said this coun­try’s or­der of 250,000 vac­cines from the Serum In­sti­tute in In­dia has not been fi­nalised.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the High Com­mis­sion­er last week about the sta­tus of this coun­try’s or­der of In­di­an-made vac­cines. In a re­sponse yes­ter­day, the High Com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice said it is will­ing to help ex­pe­dite the or­der but on­ly af­ter T&T “places an or­der with the Serum In­sti­tute di­rect­ly and reach­es a com­mer­cial agree­ment.”

“The ex­ter­nal sup­plies of vac­cines are an on­go­ing process, de­pend­ing on avail­abil­i­ty and do­mes­tic re­quire­ments,” the of­fice said. It added that in the com­ing weeks, In­di­an vac­cines are ex­pect­ed “to reach some of the Caribbean coun­tries whose gov­ern­ments have re­quest­ed In­dia for do­na­tion” but gave no fur­ther de­tails.

“The to­tal do­na­tion of vac­cine to the Caribbean coun­tries is ex­pect­ed to be around 500,000 dos­es,” High Com­mis­sion­er Sahu said.

T&T, through For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne, be­gan dis­cus­sions about pur­chas­ing 250,000 or­ders of the vac­cine on Feb­ru­ary 16, one day af­ter the Serum In­sti­tute re­ceived Word Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­proval. Browne has writ­ten to his In­di­an coun­ter­part, Dr S. Jais­hankar, for help in get­ting the re­quired ex­port ap­proval.

“Keep­ing in mind our own do­mes­tic de­mand and oth­er com­mit­ments for made in In­dia vac­cines, our long-stand­ing friend­ly re­la­tions with the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, we will try our best to ex­pe­dite this ap­proval process,” the High Com­mis­sion­er said.

How­ev­er, he point­ed out: “The High Com­mis­sion is not aware of any pro­pos­al from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment re­quest­ing for gift­ing of vac­cines by the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia.”

The Gov­ern­ment of In­dia do­nat­ed some 50,000 dos­es of vac­cines to Bar­ba­dos, an­oth­er 70,000 to Do­mini­ca and will con­tribute some 500,000 vac­cines to Cari­com. By yes­ter­day’s count, In­dia has do­nat­ed 6.75 mil­lion dos­es and dis­patched an­oth­er 22.3 mil­lion dos­es on com­mer­cial terms to 28 coun­tries.

Bar­ba­dos has gift­ed T&T 2,000 dos­es of vac­cines, enough to vac­ci­nate 1000 peo­ple, and 3,000 to Guyana.

“In the Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean re­gion, Mex­i­co has al­ready pur­chased 0.87 mil­lion dos­es; Brazil has pur­chased 2 mil­lion dos­es, and Ar­genti­na pur­chased 5.8 mil­lion dos­es,” the Com­mis­sion­er said. “In­dia has al­so do­nat­ed 200,000 dos­es for UN Peace­keep­ing Force.”

More than 90 coun­tries are look­ing for In­di­an vac­cines ei­ther through do­na­tion or com­mer­cial pur­chase and as of yes­ter­day, some 28 coun­tries have ben­e­fit­ed from made in In­dia vac­cines.

T&T be­gan the roll­out of the 2,000 vac­cines last Wednes­day in Trinidad and in To­ba­go on Sat­ur­day. The first dos­es have al­ready been ad­min­is­tered and the sec­ond dos­es are ex­pect­ed to be ad­min­is­tered with­in the next 12 weeks.

At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley warned that small­er coun­tries are be­ing over­looked in their at­tempts to get COVID-19 vac­cine sup­plies. He and Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said the gov­ern­ment is try­ing to ma­noeu­vre around an un­equal mar­ket.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Row­ley, some small­er coun­tries are not even be­ing al­lowed in­side the door to place or­ders.

How­ev­er just last week he was con­fi­dent about the sup­ply to T&T say­ing then that “monies have been paid, lo­cal prepa­ra­tions have been made, or­ders, ne­go­ti­a­tions out­side of CO­V­AX sup­ply are cur­rent­ly un­der­way and we are close to re­ceiv­ing and us­ing our an­tic­i­pat­ed sup­ply.”