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Thursday, July 10, 2025

T&T already in talks to access latest US vaccine pledge

by

Renuka Singh
1514 days ago
20210518
Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Amery Browne

Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Amery Browne

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is once again pledg­ing mil­lions of dos­es of ap­proved vac­cines to help coun­tries bat­tle COVID-19.

In a tweet yes­ter­day US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden said that “Amer­i­ca will nev­er be ful­ly safe while this pan­dem­ic is rag­ing glob­al­ly. That’s why to­day, I’m an­nounc­ing that over the next six weeks we will send 80 mil­lion vac­cine dos­es over­seas.”

Last month the US promised to share some 60 mil­lion dos­es with poor­er coun­tries but that stor­age was taint­ed and could not be used again.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne yes­ter­day said that this lat­est an­nounce­ment “goes well be­yond the pre­vi­ous COVID-19 vac­cines com­mit­ment that was made by the USA to the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty.

“Pres­i­dent Biden made it very clear that his na­tion in­tends to be the glob­al leader in ac­tive­ly en­sur­ing im­proved vac­cine ac­cess to oth­er coun­tries dur­ing this phase of the pan­dem­ic, and that is ex­cel­lent news for the de­vel­op­ing world, for Cari­com, and for T&T,” Browne said.

“The Gov­ern­ment of T&T has strong­ly and con­sis­tent­ly con­tin­ued to use all avail­able chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and diplo­ma­cy to press home the in­ter­na­tion­al ad­vo­ca­cy con­duct­ed by the Kei­th Row­ley as Prime Min­is­ter of T&T and as chair of Cari­com,” he said.

Browne said that T&T’s Em­bassy team in Wash­ing­ton DC has been ful­ly mo­bilised in work­ing with a range of ad­vo­cates at all lev­els as the White House fi­nalis­es the de­tails of ex­act­ly how and when these vac­cines will be dis­trib­uted.

“Our ex­cel­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the US Em­bassy here in PoS al­so con­tin­ues, and I have al­ready ful­ly dis­cussed the new vac­cine pos­si­bil­i­ties with Shante Moore who cur­rent­ly heads their Em­bassy team,” he said.

“T&T cer­tain­ly wel­comes this new ini­tia­tive and we con­tin­ue to work with all in­volved stake­hold­ers with the ob­jec­tive of bring­ing home the im­por­tant ben­e­fits for our peo­ple,” Browne said.

The US has been us­ing Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na and John­son & John­son and al­ready shared mil­lions of its As­traZeneca stocks.

At the time of the 60 mil­lion dose promise, Browne said that the US asked about util­is­ing the Caribbean Pub­lic Health (Carpha) in­stead of the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty which was al­ready stressed.

It is un­clear now what av­enues of dis­tri­b­u­tion would be utilised for this share of the vac­cines.


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