The nation’s leader is hoping that the country can fully utilize all its current COVID-19 vaccine stocks before they expire at the end of next month, June 2021.
Prime Minister Gaston Browne commented on this during his weekly radio program, The Brown and Browne Show, last Saturday (22 May 2021) on Pointe FM 99.1.
“In essence, we have about one month to go to utilize these vaccines,” he pointed out, not for the first time.
The PM went on disclose that he will today (Monday 24 May 2021) address the 74th World Health Assembly (WHA) where he will “make the case for increased vaccine equity and access, as well as lowering the cost of vaccines – especially for small, vulnerable, high income countries such as Antigua and Barbuda”.
It is in that context, PM Browne went on to explain, that he considers it self-defeating and self-contradicting if Antigua and Barbuda lobbies and agitates for increased access to more affordable vaccines, while sitting on stocks that remain unused to the point of expiration. “It would be a tragedy if after all our efforts to secure life-saving vaccines that we end up with thousands of vaccines expiring on us.”
PM Browne said Government was doing all it could “to make sure we [have] vaccines available, and we feel sure that within coming weeks we will have additional vaccines. We are still in the market for some Sputniks [the Russian vaccine]. We’re just awaiting the WHO approval which, hopefully, will come in a matter of weeks; and then we’ll be moving quickly to import some more Sputniks here … We’re also looking at the possibility of getting other vaccines. You know the Cuban vaccine [Soberana] is now going through the third [phase] trial.”
Further to that, PM Browne revealed, Antigua and Barbuda has also held discussions with US vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna. “Pfizer said probably later in the year they’ll be able to have a discussion with us about getting some vaccines. Moderna said not before January.”
He said these attest to his Government’s ongoing efforts at obtaining a variety of vaccines from which Antiguans and Barbudans could choose, “but the wealthy countries have already pre-bought all the Moderna and Pfizer [vaccines] and so on, and they are just not available to us at this time.”
Notwithstanding that, the Prime Minister promised, the governments of Antigua and Barbuda and other territories of the region would not resile from their efforts in this regard.
“Within the OECS we plan to have a demarche on the Unites States again to ask President Biden to make a few hundred thousand vaccines available to the OECS sub-region … I don’t know that the United States should be giving all of the vaccines directly to the COVAX facility to distribute. It would be good if they can make a bilateral contribution to the OECS sub-region … and if they can even broaden it to include the broader CARICOM region, better yet.”
