Coronavirus: Luis Lacalle Pou announces that Uruguay plans “to have vaccines for 2,800,000 people”

The President of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, said at noon at a press conference today that “the government’s aspiration is to have vaccines for 2,800,000 people ” and that the planned investment in the purchase is $ 120 million.

Last night he announced that the government had reached an agreement with the American laboratory Pfizer-BioNTech and another with Chinese pharmaceutical Sinovac for the purchase of doses of their coronavirus vaccines. Lacalle informed that the agreement with Pfizer-BioNTech covers 2 million doses and provides for “the arrival around March”. Likewise, the agreement with Sinovac covers 1,710,000 doses and the arrival date is “the same” after payment, said Lacalle Pou. Added to this are the vaccines that Uruguay has guaranteed by participating in the Covax (Global Access Fund for Covid-19 Vaccines). There are 1,500,000 over there.

“The government’s aspiration is to have vaccines for 2,800,000 people,” said Lacalle, who thanked “the people who worked hard and deserve to be recognized”. “Álvaro Delgado and Rodrigo Ferrés did a great job,” added the president.

Vaccination plan

Regarding the vaccination plan, he said that “the vaccination order will start with the personal health and it will be at the same time with the residential elderly, education system “, in line with the idea of ​​being able to start classes” in person “.

“We will continue with the over 75s and so on with the vaccination system available to our country,” said the president. and stated that among the target audience are people in prison and scientific systems.

Lacalle mentioned the objective of 600,000 doses per month that had been planted at the beginning and declared that this figure is “ambitious”. On contracts and liability for side effects, Lacalle Pou affirmed that the two contracts signed include “clauses which make up for the speed at which these vaccines were produced”, which normally takes 5 years, he said. , and whether Uruguay had the option of taking the vaccines or not. “And in this plan, we take certain responsibilities,” he explained.

The Uruguayan president announced last night that he was negotiating with other providers and he said today that there were three laboratories. Sources familiar with told The country that one of the candidate vaccines is that produced by the multinational pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson, but efficacy results are still awaited. Uruguay is also participating in the Covax mechanism whereby the government has accepted an investment of $ 2.5 million and guarantees 1.5 million doses, which will be used to immunize some 750,000 people.

The Country / GDA