Foreign Ministers of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) yesterday impressed upon United States Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman the urgency for the delivery of the second tranche of donations of Pfizer vaccines from the US.
A release from the Caricom Secretariat said that the Ministers and Sherman along with Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Ambassador Brian Nichols held a virtual dialogue yesterday on the margins of the UN General Assembly.
The United States delivered the first shipments of the donated Pfizer vaccines last August, with the second shipment planned for this month. Ministers while expressing their deep appreciation for the generosity of the US, underlined the importance of maintaining the schedule given the spike in Covid-19 infections in member states, the release said. They stressed the importance of vaccines to both the health and economic sectors of the Community.
In her opening statement to the meeting, CARICOM Secretary-General Carla Barnett stated that the impact of Covid has been disproportionately large on “our small states, especially where tourism is the major source of economic activity.”
CARICOM Ministers also took the opportunity to make the case for increased climate ambition and financing for adaptation as well as acceptance of the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index as the main criterion for access to concessional development financing.
The release said that there was also a strong emphasis on action being taken at the upcoming Climate Summit COP 26 in Glasgow, United Kingdom, to scale up the ambition to cut greenhouse gas emissions to ensure that the global temperature rise be curtailed at 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels.
