United States donated 2 million vaccines to Bolivia and Paraguay

Bolivia and Paraguay will this week receive shipments of 1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from pharmaceutical companies Janssen and Pfizer, respectively, donated by the United States, the White House reported on Wednesday.

“We are going to share more doses with Latin America. On Thursday we will send a million doses of Johnson & Johnson to Bolivia and (Friday) we will send a million doses of Pfizer to Paraguay,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said at a press conference aboard the US presidential plane during a trip to Illinois.

White House sources told EFE that The delivery to Paraguay is a direct donation from the United States government, while that of Bolivia was channeled through the Covax platform of the World Health Organization (WHO), focused on equitable distribution of vaccines globally.

Bolivia and Paraguay are respectively the Ninth and tenth Latin American country to receive a vaccine donation in the 80 million doses promised by US President Joe Biden with other countries, including more than 20 million for countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Before Bolivia and Paraguay, United States to send 1.5 million doses of Moderna vaccine to Guatemala on Wednesday, which will arrive in the Central American country on Thursday. In addition, Washington has donated 1.5 million vaccines to El Salvador, 1.5 million to Honduras, 1.3 million to Mexico, 3 million doses to Brazil, 2 million to Peru, 2.5 million to Colombia and 1 million to Ecuador, a country that will receive another million more vaccines this month.

Like that of Bolivia, donations to El Salvador and Honduras were sent via the Covax platform, while those in the rest of the countries are drop shipments from the United States.

The White House chooses the most “Fast” to get every nation vaccinated, he explained to EFE an official source.

“We don’t share these doses to get any favors or concessions. Our vaccines do not come under certain conditions. We do it for the sole purpose of saving lives “a White House official pointed out last week. In addition to countries that have already received lots, the White House has promised to donate vaccines to Argentina, Uruguay, Panama, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Haiti and other nations of the Caribbean Community (Caricom).

In addition to the 80 million doses promised by the White House and the other 60 million AstraZeneca vaccines delivered in May, Biden revealed in June that The United States had purchased 500 million additional doses of Pfizer / BioNTech, which will deliver to nearly 100 countries over the next two years.

Four million dead in the world

On Wednesday, the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, lamented the “tragic figure” of 4 million deaths in the covid-19 pandemic reached today and demanded that vaccines reach the world to stop the disease once and for all.

“Vaccines are a silver lining, but most of the world remains in the dark. The virus progresses faster than inoculations “Guterres said in a statement.

“Without a doubt, much remains to be done to eradicate this pandemic; more than half of its victims have died this year», He underlined.

In this direction, the head of the United Nations recalled that “several million more are in danger if we allow the virus to spread in an uncontrolled manner ”, because“ the more it spreads, the more variants we will see ”.

(With information from EFE)

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