Bernard Says Free Vaccines Are Fit For Use
The United States government recently donated four thousand, eight hundred doses of Pfizer-BioNTech Bivalent vaccines to the Government of Belize. However, the Center for Disease Control stated on its website that these vaccines are no longer viable to be used as they target a strain of COVID no longer circulating. We asked Minister of Health Wellness Kevin Bernard about this donation.
Kevin Bernard
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health & Wellness
“I don’t think the United States government would just or the notion is that they’re just dumping things that they don’t want on us. It is a proven fact that this vaccine has been used. What happened is there are several versions of vaccines that have been done. And if you notice, we only got a small quantity of the vaccine, twelve hundred doses of them. And we accept them because at the end of the day, it’s still being used on other parts of the world. It’s not something that was banned. As I mentioned, it’s the adult Pfizer vaccine, something that was produced, had gone to all its necessary requirements. I understand from what we are that this is safe for us to use. Now, we always will rely on the CDC and other FDA regulations. As far as we are concerned from the Ministry of Health and Wellness, when we got, received these vaccines, it was given the green light. We don’t accept a vaccine just because we want to accept vaccines. Trust me, there’s a lot of due diligence that is done before we even take anything from any country.”
Reporter
“It’s not that it’s expired or something’s wrong with it. It’s just that it’s not recommended because it does nothing against the potential strains that are out right now.”
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
“We have to look at the type of strains you have. And luckily for Belize, we have not had any major issue in terms of an influx of covid cases. It’s being managed. But as I said, we will continue to realize what we can and how we can and if down the road we are not going to use the vaccine and we’re not going to use the vaccine. These are donations that are given to us. Yes, we accepted these donations but the Ministry of Health and Wellness, as I said, would not have accepted these if it is not fully recommended. As you are saying, CDC mentioned, there are certain things that you may hear on the media or on social media that sometimes not necessarily all that, we have to be very conscious of a lot of fake news. And as I mentioned, we accepted those vaccines because it was genuine and vaccines that can still be utilized within the country.”
