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The arrival of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in the Caribbean “marks the start of a new phase in the pandemic in which we start the ‘fight back’ against COVID-19” says Professor Clive Landis, immunologist and chairman of The University of the West Indies COVID-19 Task Force.
Earlier this month Barbados received a donation of 100 000 doses of vaccine from India and shared the doses with Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Dominica, Grenada and Saint Lucia, among some other Eastern Caribbean territories.
Professor Landis noted that the AstraZeneca vaccine has shown 76 per cent efficacy after one shot and 82 per cent efficacy after the booster shot in the latest phase 3 clinical trial involving more than 35 000 people in the UK, South Africa and Brazil. He also stated that the European Medicines Agency gave full regulatory approval for all persons over 18 and the World Health Organisation (WHO) endorsed the AstraZeneca vaccine for all adults over 18, and against all strains of the virus.