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BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, May, 06, 2021 (Press Unit in the Office of the Prime Minister) – Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, Dr. the Honourable Timothy Harris, has expressed solidarity with the Government and people of India, as that country is currently gripped by a deadly upsurge in COVID-19 cases that has killed thousands over the last month. 

“Today we mourn with the people of India as India is recording the largest number of deaths since the COVID pandemic started,” Prime Minister Harris said on Tuesday, May 04, after he was administered his second dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at the Sylvia Garnette Primary Health Care Facility in Tabernacle.

ThePrime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis has on occasion called on larger nations with the necessary and needed resources to be generous in their donations to India.

Territorieslike the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong have since responded to the dire situation in India by shipping plane loads of much needed donations, such as oxygen supplies, ventilators, and anti-viral drugs, to the COVID stricken nation.

PrimeMinister Harris added that, “What is somewhat tragic is that India has been in the leadership of providing safe vaccines to a number of us within the Commonwealth and we are so much indebted to them to see how quickly circumstances can change adversely, that a country that had been at the forefront is now at this particular state weakened by a pandemic that has overwhelmed its health system.”

OnMarch 01, the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis received a batch of 20,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine from the Government of India. The donation to St. Kitts and Nevis was part of a larger batch of some 570,000 doses donated by the Government of India to the CARICOM region. Of that number, a total of 125,000 went to the OECS countries. Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines received 40,000 doses each, Saint Lucia got 25,000 and St. Kitts and Nevis received 20,000.

PrimeMinister Harris said the experiences of India and what is happening in Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago and Anguilla should serve as a warning to the citizens and residents in the Federation who are hesitant towards accepting the vaccine. 

“We cannot continue to tempt fate and when persons in our households are holding back from taking the vaccine, they are tempting fate because the science is revealing that the longer persons take to address the pandemic the more likely you are going to get more variants of the COVID-19 and those that are coming in the new forms are going to be more deadly and much more transmissible,” the prime minister said.