Honduras and Guatemala received their first COVID-19 vaccines after donation from Israel

Honduras and Guatemala received their first COVID-19 vaccines on Thursday. The prizes were donated by the government of Israel. Each country now has 5,000 initial doses which will be used to start immunizing their respective health workers.

The Honduran Air Force (FAH) plane, which carried the batch of vaccines developed by pharmaceutical company Moderna from Tel Aviv, arrived at 10 a.m. (local time) in the capital of the Central American country.

“Today, the vaccination process begins with these courageous men and women who are on the front lines of COVID-19 careHonduran Foreign Minister Lisando Rosales said at a press conference.

For her part, the Minister of Health, Alba Consuelo Flores, assured that the first doses They began to be applied on the same Thursday to the staff who will make up the teams who will be in charge of the vaccination of workers who are on the front line against the pandemic., according to the plan established by the Ministry of Health and the Expanded Program on Immunization (PAI).

On Friday morning, these staff will begin with the process of vaccinating health workers who work in intensive care units (ICUs) and rooms for COVID-19 patients in different hospitals and special care centers across the country.

The 5,000 vaccines will be applied to the staff who are most at risk and who frequent the ICUs, as they are not enough to immunize all frontline staff in the country, which represents approximately 28,000 workers.

The government of Honduras reported last Tuesday that negotiations to have these vaccines began a few weeks ago.

“Just Saturday at 3 p.m., we had one last conversation with Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be able to clarify a few details, explaining that the support was crucial for us, in the sense of getting vaccines for people. In first year. line, ”President Juan Orlando Hernández said that day.

After the vaccines arrived, they were transferred to PAI’s headquarters for their refrigeration process before starting the application process. Honduras has nearly 167,500 confirmed cases and more than 4,000 deaths as of Thursday afternoon, according to the Johns Hopkins University tally.

Soon after, Guatemala He also received 5,000 doses which were also donated by Israel. They will be applied to health workers treating COVID patients.

The vaccines arrived on an Air Force plane from Honduras and the government said vaccination also started the same Thursday afternoon at three hospitals that receive coronavirus patients.

Guatemalan Foreign Minister Pedro Brolo received the vaccines with Israel’s Ambassador to Guatemala, Mattanya Cohen. “It’s a historic day,” said Brolo. “My deepest gratitude” for Israel’s demonstration of solidarityadded the Chancellor. Guatemala reported more than 173,000 infections and 6,334 deaths from the disease on Thursday.

Learn more about this topic: