The government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines is hoping to procure enough vaccines for 70,000 persons or just about 70% of the population.
Chief Medical Officer Simone Keizer-Beache told a press conference on Tuesday that Kingstown is working with the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO) and the COVAX facility to procure the vaccine.
COVAX is the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator.
The ACT Accelerator is a ground-breaking global collaboration to accelerate the development, production and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines.
Keizer-Beache said:
“As it is now, we are still aiming to have the vaccine which would be made available to us here in the first quarter.”
She said there was a recent meeting of the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) and PAHO in terms of seeing what is available.
“… with the COVAX, which vaccine we would get has not been determined. COVAX allows for access to all of the vaccines that are available — and most of them and the ones we will get in St. Vincent will depend on the availability, it would also depend on the characteristics we ask for,” Keizer-Beache said.
“We are asking for sufficient vaccines to immunise 70,000 Vincentians, basically 70% of our population,” she said, adding that under the COVAX facility, sufficient vaccines for 20,000 Vincentians will be given to SVG free of cost.
“… that is the intention, though I must caution that as yet the COVAX facility has not been able to get all of the funding they need to be able to meet all of the commitments they have made. They are still seeking funding. The goal is $5 billion.
“So, for now, St. Vincent is going to get 20,000 and we are going to buy, as a country, with funding from different agencies, local funding, and additional, sufficient for 50,000 vaccines. That is the plan.”
Regarding rollout of the vaccine, Keizer-Beache said her ministry has already started working with healthcare providers.
“We are seeking to contract a consultant to do the most important part, which is the communication, which is letting people understand what is happening, how it will happen.”
She said that luckily, for St. Vincent, as with most of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States and CARICOM countries, there is an excellent primary healthcare system, which allows for efficient delivery of vaccinations.
“Granted, that is a vaccination system that is targeted mainly towards children and the school health programme, but the mechanism, the structure exists so that we do not anticipate, in terms of some other challenges we are seeing in some other countries, that we will have that challenge in terms of rollout.”
Keizer-Beache said her ministry is in the process of procuring ultra-cold vaccine fridges to store the vaccine and also transport vehicles to move the vaccine from place to place.
“So in terms of the procurement, the storage and the distribution, those are things that we are working on already and we anticipate that we should have it.
“Our greatest challenges, we acknowledge, would be the uptake, because we do not, at this point, intend for it to be a mandatory thing, but rather a voluntary [thing] and we are asking Vincentians to get the information from credible sources so that they will be willing to take the vaccine when we have it, and it will be free of cost,” she said.
Own the jobs, . Do we have to own these vaccine to? and do we have to wear a colour to identify us before it can be given to us? will the other citizens who do not wear this colour make to suffer and die.? Will jah kill us with diseases?. Just asking.
Anyone who wants a vaccine can go right ahead. Not for me! Strange that SVG wants to pay for the vaccine, when they can get it free. Although we hear about people dying every day that get the vaccines from US companies, allegedly no one has died from the Russian Vaccine, Sputnik V, WHICH RUSSIA HAS MADE FREE OF CHARGE. Germany has ordered many millions of the Russian Vaccine as well as some of the Pfizer vaccine that has teamed up with a German company under the control of Bill Gates. So the Pfizer Vaccine actually is linked to Bill Gates. Does that make anyone feel better? What happened to people in Africa that got Bill Gates vaccines? What happened to thousands of children in India? Those vaccines took years to develop. The US sponsored Covid Vaccines took 4 months. The Russian Vaccine(s) took 7 months. Most vaccines take around 7 years to develop and most still have side-effects in spite of that…. Step right up!
This is absolutely crazy. How could you announce a vaccine without stating the serious and deadly side effects? Is st vincent the new Africa? All this roll out and testing of Covid vaccines in predominantly black countries. Perhaps the health officials and workers can try it first six months prior to offering it to the public. I’m so shocked that the population of Covid cases is perhaps one of or the lowest in the world and they are talking about $5 billion? Vincentians need that money to eat well, start businesses and advance their neighbourhoods. Who will be the one to stand up and say enough is enough? Let’s not forget that the country upon accepting these vaccines will get huge payouts from the pharmaceutical company’s. Someone will be profiting from this big time and it certainly will not be the poor and needy.
I can agree that we as vincentians need that money more than ever. We need better hospitals and health facilities, better housing for the poor and to even develop our city and rebuild our diamond dairy and the local slaughter house to provide jobs for the local people.
My bigger question is, we as the vincentian public have not experienced any so- called covid deaths, what is in the mind of our government to want to roll out a vaccine to infringe the rights and health of the citizens?
Why don’t the country invest in its people, send them to study to be scientist so we can work to create our own vaccines from our own natural products so that we can look after ourselves?
When will the government seek to hear the voice of its own people and develop the country to meet the needs of the people rather than the selfish desires of WHO?
Dear Mrs Sillyinsky,
Due to our association with Cuba and Venezuela, both of them claim they have developed a vaccine, we should get it free for all we have done for them, keeping them in power so as they can use and abuse their people.
It costs millions to develop a vaccine, but not in Cuba where they pay such developers 1/2 a cent on the dollar to what other such people get.
The cost to SVG from the real developers, is about $7 a shot. Which is about what it cost them to develop the vaccine.
So all your frightening falsities Mrs Sillyinska, are just that, falsities.
Melinda Gates stated in a video that the first to get the vaccine will be “black people”. Of coarse we have been noticing that Health Care workers, of any color, are actually the first. Nevertheless, what does her statement tell you?
What is racism?
Although Arnheim Eustace had no charisma, what I liked about him is that he never noticed anyone’s skin color. You could tell this immediately, unlike the US Democratic Party that use race and skin color as a tool for manipulation and to gain power. The great Democrats are gone. Like Cynthia McKinney (D), we will now miss Tusi Gabbard (D) from the US House of Representatives. This immediate global future looks bleak indeed! EDUCATE YOURSELVES BEFORE YOU DECIDE TO GET VACCINATED! PREVENT DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THOSE WHO CHOOSE NOT TO!
I have been hearing on SVG radio that “they” are encouraging vaccination and trying to degrade those who choose not to. What about freedom of choice?
I am told October, by when most Vincentians may already be dead.
What will they die from,… fear?…misinformation? exaggerations, Or maybe, afterwards, the vaccination itself? Should we believe everything we are told, like Saddam’s nuclear weapons? Here are a few videos you will probably hate: Watch them before Global Warming makes the world come to an end from CO2 that is one of the most necessary molecules needed to sustain life on the planet,…but… Bill Gates says we need to eliminate evil CO2 by dumping toxic chemicals into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uese-6Xln7o&t=15s