The United States is donating 5.5 million Pfizer vaccine doses along with ancillary kits to the 15 member countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). As part of this donation, a shipment consisting of nearly 569,000 doses will be delivered to Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago today, and to Barbados tomorrow. The United States is proud to partner with CARICOM and the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. This week’s deliveries are the first tranche of the United States’ 5.5 million dose commitment to all 15 CARICOM member countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.
More information on the donations to other CARICOM countries will be provided in the coming days.
— U.S. Embassy Belize (@USMissionBelize) August 13, 2021
Equitable global access to safe and effective vaccines is essential to ending the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to save lives around the world, rebuild the global economy, and stop the threat of new variants, we must vaccinate as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.
BELIZE’S VACCINE ROLLOUT: NEARLY 14% OF THE POPULATION FULLY VACCINATED
As of August 12, at least 13.7% of the population, or 59, 379 persons, have been fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, 145,750 persons, or 32.9% of the population, have received at least one vaccine dose. On June 24, the U.S. Embassy facilitated the delivery of an energy-efficient, ultralow temperature (ULT) freezer for the storage of COVID-19 vaccines, donated by the U.S. Government through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to the Ministry of Health and Wellness.
The addition of the ULT freezer will create new options for the Government of Belize to procure and store any available COVID-19 vaccine requiring ultracold storage conditions. This includes the Pfizer vaccine, currently the only vaccine authorized to vaccinate children from ages 12 to 18. Creating the capacity to vaccinate children ages 12 to 18 is particularly critical for Belize, where approximately 42% of the population is under the age of 18.

Members of Barbados parliament receive the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. Photo via Twitter @KevzPolitics
Additionally, the vaccine donations come on the heels of the U.S. Southern Command’s assistance to the Caribbean as part of a COVID response effort that has included desperately needed field hospitals for several Caribbean countries seeing peaks in virus cases, ventilators, personal protection equipment and oxygen generators.