Beautiful Virgin Islands

Monday, Oct 13, 2025

Not The Time To Wait & See! UK Minister Urges Vaccination

Not The Time To Wait & See! UK Minister Urges Vaccination

Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, who’s the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Minister responsible for the Overseas Territories (OTs) has urged residents of the OTs, including the BVI to vaccinate.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon addressed COVID-19, vaccines and the post-pandemic future for the OTs, stating that the supply of vaccines cannot be taken for granted and each batch has a limited shelf life.

"I implore everyone who can, to take the vaccine, not only for themselves, but to protect their friends and family, and do their part to ensure we can re-open borders and restart our economies. Whilst the first wave of COVID-19 was a shock, we have seen the spread of more infectious variants in the UK, Gibraltar and Bermuda, which were much harder to contain and led to more deaths," Lord Ahmad stated.

As international tourism restarts and travellers look for destinations that have managed to control community transmission, Lord Ahmad noted that the supply of vaccines from the UK gives the Overseas Territories a unique advantage to market themselves as safe places to holiday as we learn to live with COVID-19.

"We need only look to Gibraltar, which had more than 1,200 active cases when the vaccination campaign began and has managed to reduce this down to zero, or St Helena which managed to vaccinate more than 90% of its adult population within four weeks," Lord Ahmad stated.

He added, "Now is not the time to wait and see, the vaccines are safe and effective, by getting vaccinated you will be helping your community. The pandemic illustrated how fragile global supply chains are and gave us reason to think about the resilience of our communities."

Lord Ahmad expressed the view that it has been a particularly hard year for many in the British Virgin Islands, just as it has been in the United Kingdom where the virus saw a dramatic economic slowdown and sadly many deaths.

"I am proud of the fact that despite the situation we faced in the UK, we were able to support the Overseas Territories, and in the case of BVI, this included supplying lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines," Lord Ahmad shared.

He pointed out that since the outbreak of the virus, experts from the UK’s public health organisation have provided remote support to BVI via regular teleconferences to discuss disease management techniques and medical equipment. The UK provided testing kits, which more than doubled BVI’stesting capacity.

As of August 2020, the UK had supplied BVI with nearly 400,000 items of equipment, including testing machines, goggles, facemasks, and ventilators.

"In total, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has delivered over three million items of medical equipment to the Overseas Territories since March last year. We have recently been organising the delivery of the vaccines to all of the inhabited Overseas Territories. Whilst the UK provided material support, I have been impressed by the way in which people across the Territories rallied together to keep their communities safe, and how the public servants and other key workers strived tirelessly to keep essential services running in these exceptional circumstances," Lord Ahmad stated.

He noted that the pandemic has called into question all of the freedoms and certainties which 'we took for granted', but it has also forced 'us to innovate and change our ways' of working.

"We all hope that life will return to normal very soon, but we should expect that some aspects of life will have changed permanently as we move forward. Whilst this has been a shock to many of us, this is actually an opportunity for BVI, especially as the world embraces remote working, placing the Overseas Territories with an opportunity to attract new talent and inward investment," Lord Ahmad stated.

As economies restart, Lord Ahamad stated that we need to think carefully about what we can all do to protect the environment and halt global warming, which is disproportionately impacting island communities around the world.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
×