A small batch of Pfiz­er vac­cines en­tered the coun­try late Sat­ur­day night and was re­ceived qui­et­ly by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Fitzger­ald Hinds.

Hinds yes­ter­day con­firmed that he re­ceived the Pfiz­er vac­cines late on Sat­ur­day night.

The min­istry had pre­vi­ous­ly is­sued one short me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day mere­ly con­firm­ing that it re­ceived the vac­cines and Hinds of­fered a few more de­tails in a sub­se­quent tele­phone in­ter­view.

“They are in­tend­ed for use in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty,” he said.

“To the min­istry for the min­istry,” he added.

“I think it’s about 80 vials which are about 400 in all and it’s a two-shot vac­cine so that you are talk­ing about 200 per­sons. It is a very small amount,” he said.

When pressed which arm of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty was set to re­ceive this Pfiz­er vac­cine, Hinds re­peat­ed that it was “just for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.”

When asked if this was the first batch of Pfiz­er to land in the coun­try, Hinds said it “was not about first.”

“This has noth­ing to do with any oth­er arrange­ment, this was just a sep­a­rate arrange­ment for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty which we glad­ly ac­cept­ed, which I glad­ly ac­cept­ed,” he said.

“It came from the, well I would say the Gov­ern­ment, its a spe­cial arrange­ment but it has come from the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States,” he said.

Short­ly af­ter Hinds spoke with Guardian Me­dia, the Min­istry is­sued a sec­ond me­dia state­ment con­tain­ing few­er de­tails of the Pfiz­er de­liv­ery.

Ear­li­er in the day though, a pic­ture of a let­ter be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia shared first by so­cial me­dia ac­tivist Phillip Alexan­der.

In that pic­ture, the let­ter bore the let­ter­head of the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of State and named an em­ploy­ee who would be trav­el­ling with the vac­cines. That pack­age in­clud­ed 80 vials of the Pfiz­er vac­cine, 400 1ml sy­ringes and 100 vials of vac­cine dilu­ent.

But Min­is­ter Hinds would lat­er take to so­cial me­dia where he asked, “What is the big noise around this pet­ty is­sue? What is the lie?”

He stat­ed, “We re­ceived a pet­ty 400-two dose vac­cines from the US as a small gift to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty?”

Lat­er yes­ter­day evening, the US Em­bassy al­so is­sued its own state­ment about the do­na­tion of Pfiz­er vac­cines to this coun­try.

It stat­ed, “The Unit­ed States is com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go with its vac­ci­na­tion ef­forts. We be­lieve that every vac­cine counts.”

On May 21, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh signed a le­gal no­tice—No 174 of 2021—un­der the head­ing “Ap­proval in re­spect of new drugs” un­der the Food and Drugs Act. That le­gal no­tice ap­proved Sinopharm, As­traZeneca and Pfiz­er.

Mean­while, 200,000 dos­es of Sinopharm vac­cines are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive some­time to­day.