From Mexico to Argentina, what will the vaccination schedule look like in Latin American countries?

Looking ahead to the home stretch of 2020, one of the world’s most anticipated news is when will the vaccination process begin against the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19. Latin America is no exception and the various countries in the region are starting to prepare for this event, which will be crucial to emerge from the pandemic.

In this sense, the news of the last few days was that Mexico has released its vaccination schedule. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced last Tuesday that his country would start distributing the vaccine from the third week of December and that the first to receive it would be health workers.

For this first phase, you would use the first batch of over 34 million doses that you purchased from Pfizer-BioNTech.

If it manages to meet these deadlines, Mexico would be the first country in the region to start the COVID-19 vaccination process.

In Latin America, one of the areas most affected by the pandemic, the race to obtain the vaccine has suffered from the obstacles characteristic of inequality in the region.

While countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Argentina have been able to conclude private agreements with the laboratories that manufacture the vaccine, others have no other choice but to place their hopes in Global Access Fund for COVID-19 Vaccines.

Known as COVAX, this plan, promoted in part by the World Health Organization (WHO), aims to “accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines and ensure fair and equitable access to these for all. country of the world”.

In Latin America, practically all the countries are involved in the project outlined by COVAX.

Within COVAX, there is an alternative known as Advance Purchase Access (AMC), specifically designed so that poorer countries in the region, such as Honduras or Bolivia, can also access the vaccine. .

The immunization schedules of each country are obviously conditioned by how their access to the vaccine will be. With the exception of Mexico, which officially announced its plan, few concrete details are known of how other nations in the region will implement this process.

In the same way, until vaccines are officially approved, it will be difficult to get more detailed details of how each country will approach immunizing its population.

Private purchases

As mentioned above, there is a group of countries in the region that have been able to make purchases directly from laboratories and so ensure a stock of vaccines for your population. The most notorious are Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, while a notch below is Peru, Ecuador or Panama.

Although Mexico will begin its vaccination process with a contingent of 250,000 doses out of the 34.4 million it purchased from Pfizer, the truth is that its largest purchase was from AstraZeneca, which developed its vaccine in collaboration with the University of Oxford: 77 million doses.

The López Obrador government has also purchased doses of the Chinese vaccine developed by the Cansino laboratory, as well as the Russian vaccine Gamaleya. According to the president, the vaccination will be “universal and free”.

In the schedule detailed by Mexico, after health workers, it will be the turn of those who are most exposed to the possibility of contagion of the virus. People 80 and over will be the next group, then the other groups will follow in order of decreasing age (people aged 70 and over, etc.).

The second stage should start in February.

Brazil is another country with a large stock of privately purchased vaccines. Assured 100 million doses of AstraZeneca, as well as contingents from the Chinese Sinovac laboratory and also from the Russian laboratory.

The timing issue is crossed by strong political tension caused by the pandemic in Brazil. To be used, any vaccine must be approved by the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa), a body under the orbit of President Jair Bolsonaro, one of the fiercest critics of health responses to the pandemic.

The first doses are expected to arrive in the country in January, but their approval process would take at least 60 days. This means that the vaccination process could be delayed until March 2021.

However, the governor of San Pablo, Joao Doria, confronted the president for his response to COVID-19, announced that his state the process would start on January 25 with the vaccine from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac.

Its intention is to vaccinate 9 million people, according to a schedule similar to that proposed by Mexico in terms of order of priority (first health workers, then patients at risk and the elderly).

This risks ending in a confrontation between the São Paulo government and the national government, because in order to execute her plan Doria needs at least special permission from Anvisa.

Chile, for its part, would receive the first 25,000 doses from Pfizer laboratory by the end of the year and, by mid-January, it expects to receive 2 million more doses from Chinese laboratory Sinovak. So far the information is that he plans to start his vaccination process in the first half of 2021, and that will be voluntary and free.

Countries that have privately purchased vaccines also include Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica and Venezuela. The government of Nicolás Maduro has acquired at least 10 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine from the Russian laboratory Gamaleya.

While none of these countries have given specific details on when they plan to start the immunization process, they all aim to be able to immunize their health workers – the first group to receive the vaccine anywhere – during the first half of 2021.

Throughout COVAX

Although almost all countries in the region are committed to the COVAX initiative, some depend on this plan more than others.

Colombia, for example, is in private negotiations with at least six laboratories to obtain a vaccine on a private basis. However, he has not yet been able to clarify anything, and has so far only ten million doses that would reach him through the COVAX program.

The same is happening with Bolivia. The Minister of Health revealed last month that they had had “fruitful contacts” with some laboratories, but nothing had materialized yet. It should be mentioned that the country is among those who will have priority access to the COVAX program.

Paraguay and Uruguay are two countries that so far depend on the distribution that COVAX will make in the region, although without the priority character that will correspond to the most urgent countries.

The start dates for the vaccination process are in the first half of 2021.