Barbados and other countries participating in the COVAX Facility should expect to receive doses of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine later this month.
Disclosing this in her weekly briefing yesterday, director of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), Dr Carissa Etienne, said this week that 36 of the territories and countries participating in COVAX received notification that more than 35 million doses of Astra-Zeneca vaccine would start arriving “in late February”.
Etienne said the goal was to provide vaccines for at least 20 per cent of the population in each country participating in COVAX and added that the region of the Americas, including the Caribbean, needed to immunise nearly 500 million people.
The PAHO director cautioned that vaccine supplies were limited and would be in short supply everywhere at this initial stage, but she advised the supply would steadily increase “month by month”, with some 280 million doses expected to arrive in the region by the end of the year. (GC)
Subscribe now to our eNATION edition for the full story.
For the latest stories and breaking news updates download the Nationnews apps for iOS and Android.