Guyana was not listed among the 12 Caribbean states to benefit from the European Union’s down payment for 1 million doses of the expected COVID-19 vaccines as it is already among 92 economies eligible to have their participation covered under another mechanism, Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony says.
“In our case, GAVI (the Vaccine Alliance) will pay …if we were listed it would be double dipping, so to speak,” Dr. Anthony explained to Stabroek News yesterday.
Guyana, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines automatically qualify to access the Vaccine Alliance facility.
On Saturday, this newspaper reported that 12 CARPHA (Caribbean Public Health Agency) Member States have signed up with GAVI and through funding from the European Union, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in partnership with CARPHA had secured down payments to purchase over 1 million doses of the expected COVID-19 vaccines for Caribbean Member States.
They are: Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos.
With funding from the European Union (EU), CARPHA had announced that it had entered into an agreement with PAHO to support Member States’ participation in the COVAX Facility. This will be done through assistance with the required down payment to GAVI, which is the administrator of the COVAX Facility, a press release had explained. The facility aims to make investments in the acceleration of manufacturing and scaling up of an approved COVID-19 vaccine candidate to secure 2 billion doses by the end of 2021.
Guyana, like other countries, will access vaccines for 20% of its population in the first instance.
