February 26, 2021 Barbadians are to be asked to donate funds for the country to import more vaccines against the COVID-19 virus, the Prime Minister told the nation Thursday night. While the first batch of tens of thousands of doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine from India was free, it will cost the government dearly to acquire other consignments, Mia Mottley said. As Government expects an additional large shipment to arrive here shortly, Prime Minister Mottley announced the pending launch of a vaccine fund to which Barbadians will be asked to contribute to help defray the cost. She was referring to the first batch from a total of 100,800 doses, allocated to Barbados under the global COVAX initiative to finance vaccines for low and middle-income nations.