Eight hun­dred thou­sand Sinopharm jabs, enough to vac­ci­nate 400,000 peo­ple, is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in the coun­try on Tues­day. Mean­while, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive his vac­ci­na­tion next week.

Row­ley gave the up­date on the Gov­ern­ment's vac­cine ac­qui­si­tion at the COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's, on Sat­ur­day.

"As I speak to you now, in the air, on the way to us, and sched­uled to ar­rive here on Tues­day morn­ing is a ship­ment of 800,000 vac­cines," he said.

The coun­try al­ready re­ceived 200,000 vac­cines from Chi­na; 100,000 do­nat­ed and an­oth­er 100,000 was pur­chased.

He said that T&T had a "line of pur­chase" with Chi­na.

The Prime Min­is­ter could not give the cost of the vac­cines as that is pro­tect­ed by a Non-Dis­clo­sure Agree­ment (NDA), he said.

"You don't sign it, you don't get it," he said.

"We placed or­ders ex­pect­ing vac­cines to come from here, to come from there, what if it doesn't come?" he said.

Row­ley said that we were able to pro­cure the vac­cines be­cause of the "good re­la­tion­ship" with Chi­na.

"All of that to­geth­er means that we would have had, in hand, just over 1.2 mil­lion dos­es," he said.

"As of to­day we can look con­fi­dent­ly at be­ing able to vac­ci­nate 600,000 peo­ple," he said.

Row­ley said that the State was al­so ex­pect­ing a ship­ment from the African Med­ical Sup­plies plat­form in Ju­ly.

The Prime Min­is­ter said that af­ter a year and a half of bat­tling with the virus, the coun­try need­ed to vac­ci­nate some 900,000 peo­ple.

He said that the coun­try has come a long way since April.

"Had we not got these ini­tial gifts, very small quan­ti­ties, there would have been no vac­cine in Cari­com," he said.

Row­ley said that 70 per cent of all the vac­cines have gone to a "hand­ful of rich and pow­er­ful coun­tries in the world." The rest of the world, he said, had to ac­cess less than one per cent of the vac­cines pro­duced.

"That is the fact," he said.

He said that de­spite that sit­u­a­tion, there was now hope in T&T.

"If we are able to vac­ci­nate 900,000 of the 1.4 mil­lion, our tar­get would have been met," he said, adding that the 900,000 would get the coun­try to herd im­mu­ni­ty.

Row­ley said that the oth­er dos­es ex­pect­ed with­in the next two months would on­ly bol­ster the coun­try's vac­cine roll­out.

He said that by mid-Ju­ly there should be no re­stric­tions to get­ting the vac­cine.

Row­ley said that while the vac­cine was vol­un­tary, he hoped peo­ple un­der­stood the se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion of not tak­ing the vac­cine.

He said that peo­ple who are vac­ci­nat­ed re­spond bet­ter if they con­tract­ed the virus, while un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple con­tract­ing COVID-19 could lead to death.

"We now have a choice to make," he said.