Caribbean: We all know after India backs down, the Caribbean is in dire need of COVID-19 vaccines in the nation. This made several Caribbean island nations appeal to the United States to share its stockpile of vaccines.
As it has stated, it would with Mexico and Canada, requesting on it not to ignore its Third Border.
The nations of the Caribbean, except for Cuba, which is developing its own homegrown Covid-19 vaccines, which is currently in the third phase of trials.
The Caribbean is not in the position to make its own vaccines. These islands have only received a dribble amount of shots which is not sufficient for the entire population.
Under the ‘Vaccine Maitri” programme, India has donated jabs of vaccines to almost all Caribbean islands, but a sudden outbreak of coronavirus in India restricts it to share prior vaccines in the Caribbean.
Caribbean nations are majorly dependent upon tourism-dependent economies, which is adequately affected by a pandemic that has turned the travel sector into a crisis.
On the other hand, Jamaica and Antigua and Barbuda are encountering severe COVID-19 outbreaks at the moment, with a new spike of cases per capita more than twice the global average.
The Chairman of the CARICOM Caribbean bloc, Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Keith Rowley, has written to U.S. President Joe Biden endeavouring provision of World Health Organization-approved COVID-19 vaccines for the region.
White House stated, The United States intends to spend roughly 4 million doses of Oxford AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine that it is not using to Mexico and Canada in loan contracts with the two nations.
The Biden government has come under pressure from nations around the world to share vaccines, and particularly it’s stock of Oxford AstraZeneca’s vaccine, which is authorized for treatment elsewhere but not yet in the United States.
AstraZeneca has millions of shots made in a U.S. facility and has declared it would have 30 million jabs ready at the beginning of April.
The management of Caribbean twin-island nations St. Kitts and Nevis and Antigua and Barbuda have also written to the Biden legislation.
In a virtual forum hosted by the Organization of American States (OAS), Foreign Affairs Minister(St Kitts and Nevis), Mark Brantley stated, “I have myself registered to the United States that … having benefited the other two boundaries Mexico and Canada, that it would perhaps be useful for them to think of their’ third border’, the Caribbean,”
Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne stated he underscored the fact that the earnings of Caribbean island nations had shrunk up to 30 percent, with unemployment surging to more than 50 percent in some states.
Moreover, Jamaica has become the first Caribbean country to receive COVID-19 vaccines through the WHO-backed COVAX facility but in a very short amount of consignment. At the same time, the Bahamas to get its COVAX-covid-19 vaccines in the first week of April.
