Gail Alexan­der

This coun­try’s vac­cine process is tak­ing off last in the Caribbean and at the rate of 1,000 to be ad­min­is­tered dai­ly, T&T may on­ly achieve the nec­es­sary herd im­mu­ni­ty and vac­ci­nate the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple by 2025, said UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal.

Mooni­lal spoke yes­ter­day af­ter Gov­ern­ment re­ceived its first tranche of 33,600 vac­cines on Tues­day. The vac­cines ar­rived af­ter a four-hour flight from Mi­a­mi.

Mooni­lal said, “I’m pleased that af­ter a very lengthy wait and the fact that we’re tak­ing off last in the Caribbean, there are now a few dos­es avail­able. But at the rate, we’re go­ing the pri­vate sec­tor needs to get in­volved as we can’t de­pend on Gov­ern­ment to in­oc­u­late 70 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion need­ed for herd im­mu­ni­ty.”

UNC’s Dr Rai Rag­bir agreed the num­ber of vac­ci­na­tions dai­ly should be in­creased. He not­ed Bar­ba­dos did 2,000 to 4,000 dai­ly.

Mooni­lal added, “Luck­i­ly we still have the 40,000 dos­es ex­pect­ed from In­dia’s Gov­ern­ment, but we might have to beg fra­ter­nal gov­ern­ments for oth­ers which will be need­ed to cov­er all in T&T. And Gov­ern­ment hasn’t even be­gun to think of what will ap­ply for the three new mu­tat­ed virus­es.”

Mooni­lal was crit­i­cal of the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­cent re­marks about vis­it­ing Pe­nal, de­scribed as a COVID “hotspot.”

Mooni­lal added, “This is a tiny is­land. In a pan­dem­ic, an en­tire is­land is a hotspot es­pe­cial­ly when you‘re warn­ing an en­tire coun­try all the time to so­cial dis­tance and wear masks. If there are peo­ple in Pe­nal with COVID, they could have got­ten it in Point Fortin or POS.”

“From Day One, they’ve nev­er told us of the lo­ca­tion of COVID cas­es, but all of a sud­den now, Pe­nal is a hotspot? How cred­i­ble is this, mi­nus lo­ca­tion in­for­ma­tion be­fore?”

“We’ve al­ways said the il­le­gal mi­grant pop­u­la­tion is ex­ist­ing with­out in­for­ma­tion and su­per­vi­sion of health needs. It’s a cri­sis we face in South. We don’t know to what ex­tent this hid­den mi­grant sec­tor is play­ing a role in the COVID sit­u­a­tion.”

Mooni­lal said the for­eign re­la­tions as­pect is al­so an is­sue.

“The cold war brew­ing be­tween the US and T&T sug­gests for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment and in­fra­struc­ture will be wan­ing which could have con­se­quences for T&T’s COVID fight.”

“An­oth­er as­pect con­cerns T&T’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion in In­dia and Chi­na from whom this coun­try has sought vac­cines. T&T’s High Com­mis­sion­ers to those coun­tries aren’t well known. Yet they’re rep­re­sent­ing T&T to 40 per cent of hu­mankind. They should have played a proac­tive role in se­cur­ing vac­cines – In­dia’s High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T has emerged as a Caribbean star.”

“This is all a col­lapse of for­eign pol­i­cy. You can’t blame the present For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter since this is the lega­cy of for­mer For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses, whose in­com­pe­tence with T&T’s pro­file is well known.”

What’s the pro­ce­dure with Chi­na vac­cines?

Mean­while, the UNC’s Rod­ney Charles is call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to ad­vise whether T&T’s Am­bas­sador to Chi­na is at post in Bei­jing to deal with the crit­i­cal is­sues of sourc­ing vac­cines and en­sur­ing val­ue for mon­ey from T&T’s grow­ing Chi­nese loans/debt.

“Why is our Am­bas­sador not in Bei­jing to be on top of every as­pect of this im­por­tant bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship?”

“If any­one needs re­call­ing it should have been our Am­bas­sador to In­dia who dropped the ball sig­nif­i­cant­ly, re­sult­ing in us be­ing last in CARI­COM’s line for vac­cines from New Del­hi. In­stead, they blamed the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er, whose pri­ma­ry job is to pro­tect In­dia’s in­ter­est in T&T, not ours.”

Charles added, “Our dis­as­trous For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry’s per­for­mance was on full dis­play two days ago when Dr Row­ley, as CARI­COM chair­man, was diplo­mat­i­cal­ly snubbed, not for the first time, by be­ing left out of a ma­jor hemi­spher­ic sum­mit. In­stead, An­tigua and Ja­maica’s lead­ers were in­vit­ed as CARI­COM rep­re­sen­ta­tives to a lead­ers’ sum­mit at the White House next month.”

De­mand­ing a re­view of T&T’s for­eign pol­i­cy, he added, “Clear­ly T&T’s pay­ing the price diplo­mat­i­cal­ly for an in­co­her­ent for­eign pol­i­cy and Dr Row­ley’s ful­some, ill-ad­vised em­brace of Nico­las Maduro.”