Indian Government Gives Barbados 100K Vaccines; Barbados Offers Belize 1k Vaccines
John Briceño
Tonight, there is some progress to report on the COVID-19 vaccine front. Fellow Caribbean nation Barbados has offered Belize one thousand vaccines. On Sunday, Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Motley received one hundred thousand vaccines under the Vaccine Maitri initiative from the Indian government; the Commonwealth of Dominica received seventy-thousand vaccines. West Indies and Caribbean News online report that the vaccine, including the transportation, would be shipped at the Indian government’s expense by air cargo. India recently decided to provide another three hundred and fifty thousand vaccines to the Caribbean nations in a relief drive. The vaccine being donated is the Oxford Astra-Zeneca vaccine. Under the leadership of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is now a world leader in providing the vaccine to countries worldwide. Here at home Prime Minister John Briceño has written a letter to PM Modi requesting assistance.
Prime Minister John Briceño
“I just sent a letter to the Prime Minister of India, Prime Minister Modi since India has been assisting countries with the vaccine. So I sent him a letter and I hope to get a response shortly to see if we can get some vaccines from India. I know that Barbados just got some vaccines from India just a few days ago. It was it two days ago Prime Minister Mia Motley, called me offering a thousand vaccines. So now we have to see how we can get that from Barbados to Belize. It will be a little tricky because it is just a thousand vaccines. So we are looking at every which way there are some other people that would be visiting Belize next week from Mexico saying that they also have access to vaccine.”
Hipolito Novelo
“In terms of the one thousand vaccines from Barbados, how soon are we able to get that?”
Prime Minister John Briceño
“Well, we need to see how we can get it here. That is the tricky part. There are no direct flights from there and it is not something that you can easily put it in a suitcase and get it here. So I hope we can get it as quickly as we possibly can.”
