SKN’s astute management garners international interest

St Kitts and Nevi: Prime Minister Dr Timothy Harris on Friday shared Saint Kitts and Nevis’ all of society approach to curb and managing the COVID-19 pandemic and lead the nation on the path to a strong, safer future.

The St. Kitts and Nevis’ Prime Minister was a special guest on Bloomberg QuickTake – a global streaming news network. Launched in 2017, Bloomberg QuickTake offers live news throughout the day, as well as original documentary-style series focusing on a variety of business and political topics.

On the issues of access to COVID-19 vaccines in the Caribbean, Prime Minister Harris, who also serves as CARICOM’s head of health affairs, said larger countries needed more resources, such as the United States, to ensures the equitable distribution of vaccines worldwide, and especially within the Caribbean community.

“The USA is the most important partner for the CARICOM member countries, and especially St. Kitts and Nevis. It offers us the largest tourist intake, and it is the market for most of what we export. What we would really like to see is that the US would have shown early leadership in supporting the region as we are fighting a most dangerous pandemic. The US currently has excess vaccines. The Caribbean region urgently needs vaccines and in the short term we will require the United States of America to make a portion of the excess vaccines available to CARICOM members, including St. Kitts and Nevis,” Prime Minister Harris said during the interview.

Dr. Harris indicated that the Federation’s vaccination process is progressing fairly well, despite some levels of vaccination against the population.

With the headline, “We covered about 42 percent of our target population; cover which means they had at least their first ingestion of the vaccine. The vaccine you choose here is the AstraZeneca vaccine and it is of course a two-dose regimen. So we are on our way to reaching the target population, which is 70 percent of our population. We still have an important journey to go, but so far we are satisfied that we were able to reach 42 percent of the target in the short ten weeks.”

Although the Twin Islands Federation needs additional vaccines to adequately achieve the 70 percent vaccination target, Prime Minister Harris has said he will continue his advocacy on behalf of St Kitts and Nevis and the wider Caribbean region for the equitable distribution of vaccines.