Tobago has officially begun its vaccination program, with 34 healthcare workers on the island receiving their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Saturday.

The vaccines are part of the 2,000 doses that were donated to Trinidad and Tobago from the Barbados Government.

Two hundred of those vaccines were delivered to Tobago on Thursday, one day after the first set of doctors and nurses were vaccinated in Trinidad on Wednesday.

The doses will cover 100 health care workers in Tobago in the first phase of the vaccine roll out.

Other doses of the vaccine will be shipped to Trinidad and Tobago through the COVAX facility subsequently.

At a pandemic briefing hosted by the World Health Organization on Thursday, Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley called for CARICOM member nations not to be bullied out of their supply.

“As there is the understandable rush to receive the vaccines and inoculation of our various populations, we are more than a little bit concerned that there is to be hoarding and price gouging as well as undue preference in some quarters,” he said.