Chi­na’s Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Fang Qiu, has con­firmed that the 800,000 Sinopharm vac­cines ex­pect­ed this week, are on sched­ule to ar­rive to­day.

The vac­cines are man­u­fac­tured by the Bei­jing In­sti­tute of Bi­o­log­i­cal Prod­ucts Co. Lim­it­ed and were pro­cured by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Am­bas­sador Fang post­ed an up­date on his Face­book page yes­ter­day stat­ing, “I’m ex­cit­ed to up­date that the tranche of 800,000 dos­es of #Sinopharm vac­cines pro­cured by the T&T gov­ern­ment are tran­sit­ing in Mi­lan, Italy as sched­uled and are wait­ing to be trans­ferred to T&T. Look­ing for­ward to the ar­rival of these vac­cines to­mor­row morn­ing! Are you ready for your shots?”

Over the week­end, the Chi­nese Am­bas­sador tracked the de­liv­ery of the vac­cine ship­ment from the mo­ment it was loaded at Bei­jing air­port be­fore leav­ing Chi­na.

On Sat­ur­day, he wrote, “Heart­ened to up­date that 800,000 dos­es of Sinopharm vac­cines pro­cured by the T&T gov­ern­ment have been ready for de­liv­ery, and will be ar­riv­ing in TT ear­ly next week, adding the to­tal of do­na­tion and pro­cure­ment of Chi­nese vac­cines in T&T to 1.1 mil­lion dos­es. Three batch­es in a row in less than 60 days! Chi­na has pri­or­i­tized and ex­pe­dit­ed vac­cines pro­vi­sion to T&T. My heart­felt thanks to all peo­ple and agen­cies mak­ing this pos­si­ble. I’m sure these time­ly vac­cines will as­sist with TT’s mass vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve, es­pe­cial­ly as it’s re­open­ing its bor­ders. Stand­ing to­geth­er, we can end this pan­dem­ic soon.”

On Wednes­day 19 May 2021, 100,000 dos­es of the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­proved Sinopharm COVID-19 vac­cine, which were man­u­fac­tured by the Bei­jing In­sti­tute of Bi­o­log­i­cal Prod­ucts Co. Lim­it­ed, land­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Trinidad. 

Those dos­es ar­rived in time for the Gov­ern­ment to ramp up its na­tion­al COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve, which has been ex­e­cut­ed through Min­istry of Health fa­cil­i­ties, as well as in part­ner­ship with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty—no­tably the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA), and the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SATT).