a slow and uneven process in which Israel is leading

The first person to receive the COVID-19 vaccine was a 91 year old woman on December 8 in the United Kingdom, a small glimmer of global hope that was accentuated when the vaccination process began shortly after in the United States, Latin America and Europe.

Yet the promises of a furious and fast-paced campaign has found its limitsand the promise to immunize millions of people in a matter of weeks has been broken.

In the United States, for example, the goal of vaccinating 20 million people by December 31 has been reduced to just 2.6 million people vaccinated.

In Europe, criticism rages for the slow deployment and lack of organization to take them to all the countries of the bloc.

In Latin America, only Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica have started the vaccination process.

According to the site Our world in data, until Wednesday, more than 15.56 million doses of vaccine against COVID-19 had been administered worldwide.

Deadlines for other countries vary depending on when they will receive the necessary doses, although most plan to start in the first half of 2021.

The only country that seems to be progressing supersonic speed the one that was posted is Israel.

Israel in the lead

The vaccination process, which began on December 20, already reaches 10% of the population, three times more than the next country, the small kingdom of Bahrain.

This success is due to several reasons: the country’s population (only 9 million inhabitants), a fully digitalized health system and a centralized government which facilitated the vaccination campaign.

The country has only four health providers, and by law, all citizens must be registered in one of them.

Israel was one of the countries that earlier entered the phase of negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to obtain the vaccine.

In turn, these companies were interested in working with the country because of the prestige of its healthcare system, which is considered very effective when it comes to collecting information and monitoring their patients.

According to a note from The New York Times, Israel gets vaccinated about 150 thousand people per day. The process began with health workers and the population at risk. They are expected to receive the second dose of the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech in late January.

Cross accusations in Europe

The slow progress of the vaccination process in the European Union has generated criticisms and accusations between different actors.

Criticism was first leveled at the European Commission (EC), but recalled that its work, to obtain the vaccine, had been more than done by agreeing with the pharmaceutical companies to purchase the necessary doses.

The EC has entered into agreements with six pharmaceutical companies to obtain the vaccinations required for the 447 million inhabitants living in 27 countries.

The detail indicates that, so far, it has purchased 200 million doses of Pfizer and BioNTech (with the option to purchase 100 more), 300 million doses of AstraZeneca (with an option to purchase 100 million more) and 80 million Moderna (with option to 80 million more).

However, Uğur Şahin, one of the leaders of the German biotechnology company BioNTech, assured the press that the process of purchasing vaccines in Europe “it had not been so fast like in other places. “

According to Şahin, the root of the problem was that authorities in the bloc were betting that all the drug companies would be ready to distribute their vaccine at the same time, which did not happen.

“It’s a logical approach, but at some point it became clear that not all of them were going to be able to deliver on time, and it was too late to compensate and place new orders on time, ”he added.

Europe negotiates with Pfizer / BioNTech extend delivery of 300 million additional doses. Some governments, such as Luxembourgers, recognize that without the European Union for the moment, they would still be waiting for a vaccine.

Brussels hopes that when vaccines from other pharmaceutical companies are added, a weekly production of tens of millions of doses.

It would be, on the stage of the European executive, already in mid-April. But for now, more than vaccines, lack of organization.

The problem seems to lie mainly in the logistics of vaccines. Some countries seem better prepared than others, none particularly well, although all promise to accelerate the vaccination rate.

Germany wore Monday night just over 250,000 vaccinated, although he had already received 1.3 million doses.

Italy was going for just over 120,000 and Spain was barely over 80,000. France was a little over 2,000 years old and the Netherlands hadn’t even started.

Another factor hampering the situation is the anti-vaccine movement.

In France, 56% of people do not want to be vaccinated. In Italy, the movement is also strong. The same doctors refuse to apply the vaccine, waiting for the effects of the doses on the population before testing them. In Germany, the Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, had to ask doctors and nurses to be vaccinated against the coronavirus .

“It is an imperative of common sense and solidarity that those who work in the field of public health are also vaccinated, for their own protection and that of the patients who have been entrusted to them”, he declared.

Disorder reigns in the United States

The Operation Warp Speed, the operation of the US government to accelerate the development and distribution of vaccines which alludes to the “speed of light” It doesn’t do the name justice.

At this rate “it will take years, not months” to protect the country, complained at the end of the year President-elect Joe Biden, who had promised to administer 100 million doses during his first 100 days in office. .

The race to vaccinate millions of Americans got off to a slower and more complicated start than expected.

Overburdened and underfunded state health services are struggling to develop vaccine delivery plans.

Counties and hospitals have taken different approaches, resulting in long queues, confusion, frustration, and congested phone lines.

A host of logistical issues have complicated the process of trying to roll back a virus that has killed more than 340,000 Americans.

Around 5.3 million people received the first dose of one of two vaccines licensed in the country (Pfizer and Moderna), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The figure is still far from the 20 million that had been set as a target before the end of the year.

“There were some flaws, understandably,” the government’s chief science adviser, Anthony Fauci, told ABC.

He added that “launching a mass immunization program and getting it off to a good start” was always going to pose challenges.

Trump, for his part, released from any liability. And on Sunday, he blamed local governments for the delays.

“Vaccines are being distributed to states by the federal government faster than they can deliver!” He tweeted.

US medical director Jerome Adams told CNN that the vaccines had started in a difficult context: in the midst of an explosion in the number of cases and at the time of the end-of-year holidays, which test already saturated medical teams.

Latin America in the queue

In the region, the vaccination process has yet to gain momentum and is progressing at a snail’s speed.

After Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Costa Rica started their vaccination processes last December, no other country joined this list.

Several countries have private agreementss to obtain the doses needed to vaccinate its population.

Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador, among others, have signed agreements with the Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Sinovac laboratories.

To this must be added the vaccines that will arrive thanks to the COVAX program, a program promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Union, Latin American countries and foundations.

Its objective is to accelerate the development and manufacture of vaccines against the coronavirus and to “guarantee fair and equitable access to these vaccines for all countries of the world”.

Many countries in the region, such as Bolivia, Guatemala and Honduras, depend exclusively on this program to obtain the vaccine.

In the vast majority of cases, the central problem is when will they arrive.

There are few details on when countries in the region will receive the vaccines. The most promising simply say they will arrive “during the first half of 2021”, while others point to the second half of the year.

In Colombia, for example, it has already been argued that vaccination of healthy adults (i.e. those who are not essential or the population at risk) will only be produced in 2022.

Clarín editorial staff