(By Ernesto Cooke) – The COVAX Facility has announced its final allocation of coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines for Barbados and countries in the Eastern Caribbean that will see them receiving a proportion of 16 to 20 per cent of their population coverage by the end of March.
According to PAHO, following the approval for the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for Emergency Use List (EUL) by the World Health Organisation (WHO), 45 600 doses of the vaccine will be delivered to St Vincent and the Grenadines.
COVAX is financially supporting access to vaccines for the four Eastern Caribbean countries of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Grenada and St Lucia, that probably would have to wait many months to get vaccines if the facility did not exist.
In a statement on Saturday, PAHO said that its Revolving Fund for Vaccines (RFV) will procure and deliver the COVAX vaccines to the countries in the Eastern Caribbean and Barbados.
The countries will start receiving their first vaccines through COVAX in March if all the conditions are met.
The PAHO/WHO Representative for Barbados and Eastern Caribbean countries, Dr Yitades Gebre, stated that, “the priority of the first phase of vaccination is to save lives”.
Gebre further stated that “the vaccines will not have an important impact on virus transmission itself in the next months”.
“To achieve herd immunity, we will need to vaccinate at least 70 per cent of the population.”
