EDITOR’S NOTE: Towards the end of April, #HealthCaribbean featured vaccine equity in our edition 2021-04-29. This newsletter does the same. Two countries are covered, namely: Trinidad and Guyana. two of our five articles are on Trinidad, and one for Guyana. The headline and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) make up the remaining articles.
The headline, taken from the Jamaica Gleaner, reads: “Biden Boosting World Vaccine Sharing Commitment To 80M Doses”. Previously, the Biden’s administration had committed to share about 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine with the world. On Monday, an additional 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines was committed in the coming six weeks.
PAHO welcomed the announcement by the U.S. President Joe Biden to export 80 million doses of covid-19 vaccines within six weeks time, which included 20 million Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Trinidad’s Prime Minister had contacted the U.S. President directly to request vaccines for his country, after the announcement was made.
Meanwhile, vaccines were being supplied to the Caribbean from other sources. A Chinese donation of 100,000 doses of the WHO-approved Sinopharm vaccine arrived in Trinidad and Tobago on Wednesday. The Government of Guyana had previously bought 200,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccines and were purchasing another 800,000 doses.