St. John’s, Antigua – Tuesday, April 21, 2020: The Calvin Ayre Foundation (CAF), announced today, that over EC$4 million worth of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), is en route to Antigua and Barbuda from The People’s Republic of China, to assist the government in its fight against Covid-19.

According to Chairman of the Ayre Group, Ambassador Calvin Ayre: “As Antigua and Barbuda and many other small island developing states struggle to protect their citizenry from this highly contagious and deadly coronavirus, it is becoming painfully obvious that we cannot look to the traditional donors and trading partners for assistance in providing urgently needed PPEs.”

For example, effective Friday, April 10, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), issued a temporary rule stating that it would be allocating “certain scarce or threatened materials for domestic use, so that these materials may not be exported from the United States without explicit approval by FEMA.” The rule covers five types of protective equipment including N95 masks, surgical masks and gloves. This decision leaves vulnerable countries like Antigua and Barbuda with no choice but to seek to acquire supplies from other source markets.

“Thankfully,” Ayre said, “we were able to procure the desperately needed protective equipment from China for our front-line workers in Antigua and Barbuda.”