Paraguay will be the sixth country in South America to receive Pfizer vaccines: it will buy a million

Paraguay He received since February 2021, when the first 4000 doses of Sputnik V arrived, to date, a total of 707,400 vaccines against the coronavirus to carry out the vaccination plan of approximately 4.7 million people out of the seven that make up its population.

Recently, the national government, through the Ministry of Public Health, signed a pre-contract with the company Pfizer to purchase 1 million COVID-19 vaccines. This was announced by the minister Julio Borba, after an audience with the President of the Republic, Mario Abdo Benitez, in the government palace.

The president received the details of the agreement with the American pharmaceutical company, to acquire soon 1,000,000 doses. “I came to speak with the president to tell him that A pre-contract has already been signed with the company Pfizer and that soon we will have 1 million doses, which by confidentiality agreement can not say the amount of the cost ”, announced the Minister of Public Health Julio Borba.

At another point he pointed out that the final contract will be initialed in the first days of June. “We will form the final contract in the first days of June. No bonus should be issued and these are only documentary agreements ”, reported the Secretary of State.

The minister did not want to provide dates of arrival “In order not to generate extreme expectations”, but pointed out that the arrival will be “very soon”. “This will help to vaccinate the whole population more quickly”, he said after meeting Abdo Benítez. Likewise, he preferred not to specify the arrival of the next AstraZeneca loads from the Covax platform, which sent only a small part of the 4.3 million purchased by the government.

On the day the government announced the million-dose pre-contract with multinational Pfizer, Paraguay softened the vaccine shortage, which led to the partial suspension of vaccinations, with the arrival of 250,000 biological products from the United Arab Emirates.

The arrival of this amount of Sinopharm at Asunción International Airport is produced a month after the arrival of the last shipment of vaccines, and after last week, the government paralyzed vaccination in six health regions due to the depletion of stocks. And when the South American country, of about seven million inhabitants, experiences spikes in infections and records in its daily death register, with 8,360 cumulative deaths for one year and two months, the coronavirus has started to spread. spread.

The Sinopharm batch, which is part of a million doses purchased from a laboratory in the United Arab Emirates, was transferred from the airport to the National Vaccination Center for subsequent distribution in the various health regions. During the ceremony at the airport, Borba, He said he was “really happy” with a shipment “which will help us to continue our vaccination plan from tomorrow”.

In statements before heading to the airport, Borba said that with this shipment, Resume vaccination at 65 years old, interrupted by supply shortages. “We will continue to insist on the 65 and over age group, since, according to those recorded, there are still 30% of people who have not yet been vaccinated ”, he limited.

From February 22, when the vaccination campaign with white staff began, until Monday, Paraguay had vaccinated 262,039 people, according to variable data from the Ministry of Health. Figures compiled by Our world in data, until March 22, show that 3.55% of the Paraguayan population have already received at least one of the two doses, while 0.73% already have the full regimen.

Paraguay’s records since the start of the pandemic 8,474 deaths and 335,691 infections in total, of which 277,128 were cured. This is after Monday’s report from the Ministry of Health, which recorded 114 new deaths and 2,720 infections, in a month in which the daily death record was broken (125). The contagion curve has also exceeded the capacity of the precarious public health system, one of the weaknesses of the government to face the pandemic with vaccination conditioned by the shortage of vaccines.

With information from EFE

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