Renu­ka Singh

Trinidad and To­ba­go is among the Caribbean coun­tries late to or­der COVID-19 vac­cines.

T&T wait­ed un­til the In­di­an-made vac­cine re­ceived World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­proval be­fore reach­ing out for vac­ci­na­tion do­na­tions.

The Serum In­sti­tute in In­dia re­ceived that ac­cred­i­ta­tion in mid-Feb­ru­ary.

In an ex­change with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley sought to clar­i­fy why T&T was be­hind coun­tries like Bar­ba­dos, Guyana and Do­mini­ca with re­gards to the roll-out of the vac­cine.

On Wednes­day be­fore the me­dia event to start the roll­out of the vac­ci­na­tions, Guardian Me­dia mes­saged Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh ask­ing about the 2,000 vac­cines from Bar­ba­dos and whether there were any pur­chase or­ders for the rest of the or­ders.

The Min­is­ter re­spond­ed say­ing “as we have stat­ed nu­mer­ous times this is a gift. Free. There­fore no pur­chase or­der need­ed”.

Hours lat­er, the Min­is­ter said that the vac­cines from In­dia were for the re­gion and that Bar­ba­dos was just the dis­tri­b­u­tion hub.

By 10 pm that evening, he is­sued a clar­i­fi­ca­tion, re­vert­ing to what he had ini­tial­ly told Guardian Me­dia, that the 2,000 vac­cines were in fact a gift from Bar­ba­dos and that he was “mis­in­formed”.

Ac­cord­ing to a Cari­com re­port, In­dia was mak­ing some 500,000 vac­cines avail­able to the Caribbean, but Row­ley, who is al­so head of Cari­com said he had no idea what that was about.

There have al­so been re­ports in the Ja­maican Glean­er about the 500,000 vac­cines be­ing of­fered to Cari­com coun­tries.

Ac­cord­ing to those re­ports, the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er as­signed to each coun­try said that the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the vac­cines would start once the host coun­try com­plet­ed its ap­proval process.

“I don’t know any­thing about any 500,000. As far as I am aware from my con­ver­sa­tion with my col­league PM Mot­t­ley when the of­fer of vac­cines were made to me we were talk­ing about her gift of 50,000. It is from this 50,000 that she gen­er­ous­ly of­fered and I ac­cept­ed 2,000,” Row­ley said.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has been in touch with In­dia through our For­eign Min­istry and the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion here and those con­tacts have not re­vealed to me yet any gift batch of 500,000 vac­cines from which we can draw,” he said.

Row­ley is al­so de­fend­ing his Health Min­is­ter amid calls for him to step down say­ing that Deyals­ingh was not in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos, Mia Mot­t­ley, but that he was.

“Prime Min­is­ter (Mia Amor) Mot­t­ley of Bar­ba­dos in­di­cat­ed to me (not the Min­is­ter of Health) that Bar­ba­dos was of­fered 50,000 dos­es of a vac­cine from In­dia and that she was mak­ing a gift ges­ture of 2000 of these dos­es avail­able to Trinidad and To­ba­go for “ es­sen­tial per­sons” ( in­clud­ing PM and Cab­i­net),” he said.

“I ac­cept­ed the of­fer know­ing that not all sup­pli­ers of these prod­ucts from In­dia had re­ceived WHO clear­ance. I an­tic­i­pat­ed and it did come to pass that by the time we got the items and wait­ed a while the WHO on­ly re­cent­ly cer­ti­fied the source sup­pli­er in In­dia and thus we were able to use these vac­cines, not on Cab­i­net but on our front­line health care givers,” he said.

Row­ley said that the coun­try’s na­tion­al pro­gram is on track.

“Monies have been paid, lo­cal prepa­ra­tions have been made, or­ders and ne­go­ti­a­tions out­side of the CO­V­AX sup­ply are cur­rent­ly un­der­way and we are close to re­ceiv­ing and us­ing our an­tic­i­pat­ed sup­ply,” Row­ley said.

“Vac­cines are cur­rent­ly said to be avail­able from many sources around the world, not all of which car­ry the qual­i­ty as­sur­ance stamp of the WHO,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

“It is up to in­di­vid­ual gov­ern­ments to de­ter­mine how they treat with the var­i­ous sources and sup­ply chains, Row­ley said.

He said that in the case of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in or­der to pro­tect the cit­i­zen­ry, the coun­try will “main­tain our pol­i­cy of work­ing with­in the CO­V­AX, WHO and PA­HO and ex­pect to re­ceive our safe quo­tas from myr­i­ad sources as soon as they be­come avail­able”.

Minister of Foreign and CARICOM Affairs, Dr Amery Browne

Shirley Bahadur

PM: Op­po­si­tion fight­ing for rel­e­vance

Af­ter Deyals­ingh’s mis­step yes­ter­day, the Op­po­si­tion called on the Prime Min­is­ter to re­move him from his post. But Row­ley dis­missed this call.

“What is­sue?” he asked.

Row­ley said that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) was once again up to “pure mis­chief” and that this was the “usu­al dis­rup­tive be­hav­iour” from a “de­ranged Op­po­si­tion Leader strug­gling for rel­e­vance”.

Row­ley did not think that Deyals­ingh’s mis­step was enough of a rea­son to axe the Min­is­ter of Health.

“As All Cari­com coun­tries are busi­ly en­gaged in po­si­tion­ing our­selves to ob­tain vac­cines from a tur­bu­lent pan­dem­ic mar­ket en­vi­ron­ment we in Trinidad and To­ba­go are care­ful to ob­tain and ac­cept vac­cines on­ly from sources which have WHO ap­proval and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion,” he said.

“This is for the pro­tec­tion of our pop­u­la­tion,” he said.

Row­ley said he would con­tin­ue to “ig­nore the per­sis­tent at­tempts of the ir­re­spon­si­ble Op­po­si­tion whose on­ly aim is to un­der­mine the na­tion­al ef­fort and dis­turb the psy­che of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go”.

“Notwith­stand­ing the best ef­forts of the Op­po­si­tion Leader and her few fol­low­ers the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go can con­tin­ue to rest as­sured that their in­ter­ests are well served in the man­age­ment of this pan­dem­ic chal­lenges by a Gov­ern­ment which has been care­ful at the be­gin­ning and re­mains com­pe­tent and car­ing to the end,” he said.

For­eign Af­fairs in con­tact with In­dia

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that his Min­istry was “work­ing close­ly with the T&T Min­istry of Health to se­cure the pur­chase of 250,000 dos­es of the CO­V­ISHIELD vac­cine from In­dia”.

The Min­is­ter said that this was part of our Gov­ern­ment’s broad-based ef­forts to ac­quire vac­cines for the pop­u­la­tion “against the back­drop of a glob­al en­vi­ron­ment that has be­come high­ly com­pet­i­tive with re­spect to vac­cine ac­qui­si­tion”.

“I have been in dis­cus­sion with the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er who has agreed to fa­cil­i­tate and ex­pe­dite T&T’s pur­chase arrange­ment, in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with their Min­istry of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs,” he said.

“This has been for­mal­ized via Diplo­mat­ic Notes and I have al­so writ­ten di­rect­ly on the mat­ter to the Ho­n­ourable Sub­rah­manyam Jais­hankar, Min­is­ter of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs of In­dia,” Browne said.

“The Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs con­tin­ues to col­lab­o­rate with the Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh as the Min­istry of Health ex­plores the best op­tions to meet our lo­cal vac­cine re­quire­ments,” he said.

Browne did not re­spond to ques­tions about when his Min­istry con­tact­ed the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er.

“Bear in mind that the Co­v­ishield vac­cine was on­ly ap­proved why the WHO for use against Covid-19 on 15 Feb­ru­ary, 2021,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports, the WHO ac­cred­it­ed Serum In­sti­tute in In­dia, the man­u­fac­tur­ers of the CO­V­ISHIELD vac­cine for As­trazeneca in mid-Feb­ru­ary.

By Jan­u­ary 23, the PM of Bar­ba­dos has writ­ten to In­di­an PM Naren­dra Mo­di and by the be­gin­ning of Feb­ru­ary was thank­ing him for the 50,000 vac­cines.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley.

What is CO­V­ISHIELD

The Ox­ford-As­traZeneca vac­cine is be­ing man­u­fac­tured in In­dia by the Serum In­sti­tute of In­dia, which has been tout­ed as the world’s largest vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­er.

Ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports, the com­pa­ny said that it is pro­duc­ing more than 50 mil­lion dos­es a month.

The vac­cine is made of a weak­ened ver­sion of the com­mon cold virus from chim­panzees and has been mod­i­fied to look like the coro­n­avirus but can­not trig­ger the ill­ness.

Ac­cord­ing to Serum In­sti­tute, when the vac­cine is in­ject­ed in­to a pa­tient, the im­mune sys­tem starts mak­ing an­ti­bod­ies and that push­es the im­mune sys­tem to at­tack any coro­n­avirus in­fec­tion.

The in­oc­u­la­tion is ad­min­is­tered in two in­jec­tions be­tween four and 12 weeks apart.

Be­cause it does need to be stored in any unique re­frig­er­a­tion it is eas­i­er to dis­trib­ute.

COVID vac­cine time­line

1. Oc­to­ber 9, 2020

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says T&T is part of the Co­v­ax glob­al col­lab­o­ra­tion for de­liv­ery of vac­cines. At the time Deyals­ingh said that the coun­try had in­vest­ed some $66 mil­lion for 462,000 vac­cines enough for 33 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion.

2. De­cem­ber 11, 2020

PM says prepa­ra­tions for the Covid vac­cine has been made and the coun­try is ready to re­ceive the vac­ci­na­tions when­ev­er it be­comes avail­able.

3. De­cem­ber 24, 2020

PM says he’d be first to get the vac­cine as soon as it is in the coun­try. Jokes that Deyals­ingh would be sec­ond. PM says that he would en­cour­age his fam­i­ly to get the vac­cine too.

4. Jan­u­ary 4, 2021

PM says T&T in line to re­ceive vac­cines in the first quar­ter of 2021. He said that the Co­v­ax vac­cine was part of a 162 coun­try arrange­ment and the vac­cine would be dis­trib­uted in a phased ba­sis. He said then that 20 to 30 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion would get vac­ci­nat­ed by the end of March in­to April.

5. Jan­u­ary 29, 2021

PM said the whole world, in­clud­ing the Caribbean was fac­ing de­lays in re­ceiv­ing the Covid vac­cine.

6. Feb­ru­ary 3, 2021

PM says he was look­ing for more vac­cines to ser­vice T&T. The ad­di­tion­al vac­cines would com­ple­ment the 100,000 to 120,000 dos­es from Ox­ford-As­traZeneca from Co­v­ax. The Co­v­ax al­lo­ca­tion was giv­en a end of Feb­ru­ary ar­rival date.

He said that though a Cari­com arrange­ment with the African Med­ical Coun­cil an­oth­er 226,000 vac­cines would be made avail­able.

7.Feb­ru­ary 10, 2021

Bar­ba­dos shares 2,000 vac­cines with T&T from its cache of 50,000 re­ceived through do­na­tion from In­dia.

8. Feb­ru­ary 13, 2021

PM says that he would pur­sue phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies for more vac­cines.

At the time, the PM was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Op­po­si­tion mem­ber Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and said that he knew noth­ing of an ap­proach from In­dia to gift T&T vac­cines.

9. Feb­ru­ary 17, 2021

Vac­cine roll out be­gins. Nei­ther Deyals­ingh nor PM take first jab as promised. Both men say they will wait for the bulk of the vac­cines to come in and won’t take from this small, first batch.