By Sue-Ann Wayow
HEALTH Minister Terrance Deyalsingh maintains that Trinidad and Tobago should receive its first allocation of Covid-19 vaccines from the COVAX facility at the end of this month.
Deyalingh in answering urgent questions in the House of Representatives on Friday said, “We are informed by PAHO (Pan American Health Organisation) again all things being equal, that 33,600 doses should be here by the end of March. That is the current timeline that COVAX has given PAHO and which PAHO has passed on to us.”
He was asked by Member of Parliament for Caroni East Dr Rishad Seecheran, “Can the Minister indicate when we are likely to receive our first allocation from the COVAX facility?”
It was a supplemental question to: “In light of reported plans to purchase Sinopharm vaccines from China, does the Government have a contingency plan, should World Health Organisation approval not be granted in the short-term?”
Deyalsingh responded, “As we have stated many times both in and out of the Parliament, the Government in addition to bilateral dealings with China and or Sinopharm, is also pursuing the purchase of vaccines through the African Medical Council platform, one, through the COVAX facility and two, by bilateral talks with both countries and individual vaccine manufacturers.”
Seecheran further asked if a pre-order from Sinopharm has been made to which Deyalsingh replied, “We have placed indicative orders with Sinopharm and indicative orders with everyone we are talking to pending approval and pending their manufacturing capacity to provide for those orders.”
