BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - THE Federation is set to receive its official doses of the AstraZeneca Vaccine from the Government of India on Friday (Feb. 26) when the doses are expected to arrive in the region.
As SKNVibes News has been reporting, the Government of India has promised the region 500,000 doses of the AstraZeneca Vaccine and St. Kitts and Nevis is expected to receive its share from that batch.
Speaking during last evening’s (Feb. 23) Leadership Matters programme, Prime Minister Dr. Timothy Harris informed that the Federation has 41,600 doses of vaccines on order.
Delivery of the Vaccine is expected in the Federation over the next several weeks, Dr. Harris announced.
He however stopped short of pointing out which brand of the vaccines are being procured, but it is understood that the Government is looking to source various forms of the doses to ensure that citizens and residents are inoculated.
“We are bringing them in and making them available free of cost to every persons [sic] eligible to receive them,” he declared.
The Government is currently on a drive to ensure that frontline workers under phase one of the Vaccine Rollout receive one jab, based on the 2,000 doses that were received from Dominica.
Speaking more to Friday’s expected arrival of the Vaccine from India, Dr. Harris revealed that charter flights have been made available to bring 125,000 doses of the AstraZeneca Vaccine into the Caribbean via St. Lucia, which he described as the most direct route into the region.
After arriving in the region, individual distributions will be made through the use of the Regional Security System, (RSS).
“I was informed this evening that the expected arrival of the charter is on or about February 26th, 202. The expectation is that the RSS plane will be in St. Lucia awaiting the arrival of the charter plane coming from India,” disclosed Dr. Harris.
That flight is expected to cost US$250,000 or EC$680,000, which will be borne by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank.
