The first doses of the Coronavac vaccine against COVID-19 have arrived in Uruguay

The first doses of Chinese Coronavac vaccine arrival in Uruguay this Thursday will allow the government of the South American country start vaccination plan next Monday planned to fight COVID-19.

Shipping from 192,000 doses vaccine from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac, transferred on a charter from the Chilean airline Latam from Beijing – with stopovers in Sydney and Santiago de Chile – arrived a few minutes before 23:00 (01:00 GMT) at Carrasco International Airport, on the outskirts of Montevideo.

As previously announced, there was no authority present. The secretary of the presidency, Alvaro Delgado, had commented hours ago in a radio interview that no reception ceremony was to take place vaccines, the executive believing that this arrival was “only part of a process”.

This is the first delivery from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac, which will be completed from March 15 with 1,558,000 additional doses.

In addition, Uruguay will receive between March 8 and April 26 460,000 doses from the American laboratory Pfizer, according to figures announced last Monday by President Luis Lacalle Pou.

Doses of Sinovac will begin to be administered on March 1 to teachers, police officers, firefighters and serving military personnel, as well as employees of the Uruguayan Institute for Children and Adolescents (INAU) under the age of 60., which from this Friday can register in an agenda authorized by the Ministry of Public Health (MSP), while from the 8th, healthcare workers will be vaccinated with Pfizer.

Delgado added that the Uruguayan government has been very hard “in negotiating to acquire the vaccines, not only to have large quantities, but also to ensure that there will be no downtime and that there will be no times when the vaccination plan is paralyzed “.

Lacalle Pou had already mentioned in the said apparition that “there will be no downtime“Between the doses already announced and those which complement the purchase by Uruguay of 3.8 million doses -between Pfizer and Sinovac- and the reserve of 1.5 million of the Covax platform, created by the World health (WHO) for distribution among the least favored countries.

Uruguay has recorded since March 13, 2020 – when the health emergency was declared in the country – 55,695 infections (6,604 active, including 61 in intensive care) and 595 deaths.

(With information from EFE)

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