Vaccination in Latin America: Progress slowly and warn that COVID-19 cases could increase after Easter

COVID vaccination is slow in Latin America. Millions of doses are still missing to protect the population most exposed to complications. In cases where vaccination has started since December, such as in Argentina, distribution and application in priority groups is still in the initial stages. In other countries, such as Nicaragua, Bolivia or Venezuela, the first doses have only been received in recent weeks. During, The Pan American Health Organization has warned that contagions could increase after the Easter meetings.

For the health agency, there may be a third wave of COVID-19 cases in Latin America if the measures are relaxed during Holy Week (between April 1 and April 4) or the holidays that are taken in March or April in some countries of the region. “We must keep all the measures to avoid an increase in transmission as we have done in many countries for Christmas, Carnival and others. Where the guard is lowered and the conditions exist to accelerate transmission, the virus seizes the opportunities and begins to circulate again with greater speed and force, ”said PAHO Deputy Director Jarbas Barbosa.

“Latin America and the Caribbean are the epicenter of the pandemic. Vaccination against the coronavirus is very slow. We have very few vaccines, ”he said. Infobae Dr Angela Gentile, Argentinian Pediatric Society and National Commission for Vaccine Safety.

“There are agreements that countries make with laboratories that produce vaccines on the one hand. On the other hand, the vaccines acquired thanks to the COVAX mechanism are just arriving in the region. In Argentina, they have not yet arrived. The Latin American region urgently needs more doses to immunize health workers and the elderly, ”Dr Gentile told Infobae.

The risk of cases in Latin America rising even further due to potential Easter week encounters occurs against the backdrop of critical situations like that in Brazil. with an increase in cases, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19, which has led to cities such as San Pablo has suspended religious celebrations and football due to the possible collapse of the healthcare system.

Regarding Argentina, “we have a good capacity of the health team to vaccinate, but vaccine doses arrive slowly and irregularly. As some vaccines are intended for people under 60, planning and timing of the vaccination campaign is very difficult, ”commented Gentile. “I think the health teams have the capacity to speed up the campaign in an orderly fashion, but a challenge is that Argentina is in the global context in which there is difficulty obtaining vaccine doses. This challenge is not minor, ”he stressed.

Another renowned expert from Argentina, Dr Silvia González Ayala, said on Wednesday in a dialogue with Infobae: “For the vaccination plan to be accelerated, it is necessary to have more doses of vaccines, and to improve the logistics of distribution and application in order to reduce the transmission of the coronavirus and the deaths before the onset of the disease. winter.”

González Ayala, consultant in infectology and member of the Institutional Committee for the Review of Research Protocols, Hospital de Niños Superiora Sor María Ludovica in La Plata, and member of the Vaccines Commission of the Argentine Society of Infectology, considered that “having more doses of the vaccine is as essential as having a quick and timely distribution. People from priority groups must be summoned and vaccinated quickly ”.

Regarding the distribution of COVAX mechanism vaccines, the Argentinian Ministry of Health had indicated that an additional fee had been paid to receive the doses from February 2021. However, they have not yet arrived in the country. Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Jamaica will receive doses of AstraZeneca in the coming days. Purchase orders have also been placed with the Serum Institute, which manufactures for AstraZeneca, Nicaragua and Bolivia.

According to OPS, Venezuela has yet to pay the necessary $ 18 million to join the mechanism, but they assured that the negotiations are progressing and hope that the country can be included in the second phase.

The mechanism COVAX, which stands for Global Access to COVID-19 Vaccines in Spanish, was launched by the Coalition for the promotion of innovations for epidemic preparedness, the Gavi Alliance for Vaccines and World Health Organization. Its objective is to distribute 2 billion doses in 2021, especially in the poorest countries, and to vaccinate 27% of its citizens.

Some 92 low-income countries are purchasing vaccines with the support of COVAX. With this mechanism, we hope to vaccinate the poorest citizens free of charge. Some 80 high-income economies have announced they will pay for vaccines. However, in recent weeks, criticism has been leveled at developed countries for not being quick in their availability to help developing countries.

The commitment of COVAX is that in the first step 18 countries receive approximately 1.2 million doses, out of a total of 40 million, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which requires special storage conditions of -70 ° Celsius. A much larger deployment, of around 336 million doses, of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine is expected, which will be shipped to almost every country that has signed the COVAX plan, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

A few days ago, Peru received the first shipments of the Pfizer vaccine via the COVAX mechanism. Colombia was the first country in Latin America to receive vaccines through this mechanism. These doses are being administered to groups at risk, including indigenous communities in the Amazon region of the country, according to PAHO at a press conference this week. The Bahamas received their first vaccines thanks to a donation from the Indian government of 20,000 doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine. All countries participating in the COVAX mechanism have been informed of the number of doses they will receive until May of this year.

For their part, some countries have made purchases on their own account. Like Argentina, and also Chile. In the case of Chile, the purchase and logistics of the vaccination plan enabled it to speed up the vaccination of the population. At the end of the month, it will put an end to priority groups and those most exposed to COVID.

Chilean Minister of Health Enrique Paris listed the keys for his country to be among the most efficient in the process of vaccination against the coronavirus in the world and revealed that on Thursday the system had reached a record by inoculating 412 thousand people in just 24 hours. Paris said the administration had started to prepare the campaign succeeded “in May 2020, when the minister was Jaime Mañalich” and there was still no advanced development in any country in the world. They plan to vaccinate 80% of the population by the end of June.

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