India agrees to provide COVID-19 jabs to Barbados

Thanks to India, 50,000 Barbadians will soon benefit from COVID-19 vaccinations.

That is the word from Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who today revealed that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had agreed to give Barbados 100,000 vaccines.

While not giving a specific timeline, Mottley said the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccines were expected on the island in short order.

India is one of the three locations globally where the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is being produced.

She said Government was at the stage where logistics were being settled.

“Let me at the outset first and foremost thank the Government of India and Prime Minister Modi. As you would have heard I wrote him just over 12 days ago indicating that our country was facing a peculiarly difficult moment and that we would wish to have both the donation and purchase of vaccines from Oxford AstraZeneca, which as you know are being manufactured in India.

“We have had commitments from the Government of India and we expect to receive very shortly the first supply for 50,000 persons which will be 100,000 vaccines and we hope to be able to start the deployment of that in the very near future,” Mottley said during a televised national address from IIaro Court.

The Prime Minister said in the coming weeks, additional information would be provided by the COVID Communications Unit related to public education and sensitization.

She reiterated that frontline workers will receive the first jabs, followed by the elderly and those deemed most vulnerable.

“I am conscious there are some people who continue to have concerns and we will meet with them, but there are also a lot of persons who are ready. We have given a commitment and Cabinet has agreed that the first beneficiaries must be the frontline workers,” Mottley maintained.

“For us, frontline workers go from the medical and when I say medical I don’t mean doctors alone, I mean any and everybody working in critical medical establishments publicly and if there is enough, ultimately we will reach to the private as well. We also mean the police and national security forces of the country and critical essential services that keep the country going.

“We are still anxiously going forward because we feel that in those 50,000 we can also reach the elderly and the most vulnerable and I’ve asked the hospital and the Ministry of Health through its polyclinics to be able to identify those patients, those persons, with multiple comorbidities who must be in that first batch of 50,000.”

Mottley gave the assurance that Government would be working assiduously to get more vaccines, “because we recognize that aggressive testing, aggressive vaccination, aggressive communication, these are the things that will help bring us back”. (RB)