Uruguay received the first shipment of 50,000 doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday

One of the most anticipated days for Uruguayans has arrived. This Wednesday the first shipment of Pfizer and BioNtech vaccines against the coronavirus. The flight, departing from Amsterdam and with stopovers in Germany and Brazil, went to Uruguay 50,000 doses to be administered from Friday to health personnel working in mobile emergency and intensive care units.

The vaccines arrived in the country at 8:38 p.m. (11:38 p.m. GMT), on German airline Lufthansa flight LH8264, from Sao Paulo (Brazil), which landed at Carrasco International Airport, on the outskirts of Montevideo.

The government has set up a special agent maintain the cold chain because this vaccine requires that it be stored at very low temperatures. Arriving in the country, will be put in the six ultrafreezer already prepared in the airport cargo terminal, 70 ° C below zero.

According to the local newspaper The country, so will be taken to the more than 100 thermal boxes from the company Va-Q-Tec to be transported to the metropolitan area, San José, Florida, Maldonado and Minas (Lavalleja) and by the air force to the rest of the Uruguayan departments.

According to the Telenoche network, the distribution operation will begin at three in the morning in one of the Hercules planes.

Inoculation of healthcare workers with Pfizer will begin this Friday and, at this time, although there is no exact figure for the number of registrations, there are already nearly 46,000 people on the agenda, as shown by the web monitor developed by the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) in its update at 19:53 (22:53 GMT). The Uruguayan government announced in February that it would receive until April 26 450,000 doses of Pfizer.

During the first stage of vaccination, workers in intensive care units and their support workers, out-of-hospital care workers, those working at the doors of emergencies and emergencies, in inpatient units, in ward blocks surgeons and those performing the procedures will be inoculated test to detect the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

This Wednesday is the first batch of vaccines out of a total of 460,000 to be completed in the weeks following the first delivery and the arrival of another consignment of dose from China Sinovac.

“On March 15, 1,558,000 arrived from Sinovac, that is to say that the vaccine stock will be, and the ability to vaccinate 30,000 (per day) as well; It will depend on the people who come and as we release the people, ”the president said a few days ago. Luis Lacalle Pou, in an interview with the TV news Telemundo.

Concern about the border with Brazil: they send a remainder of vaccines

A remainder of the first 192,000 vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that Uruguay received on February 25 will be used for “shield and seal“The dry border of this country with Brazil, as announced on Tuesday by the Minister of Public Health, Daniel Salinas.

The portfolio owner said that after the agenda for the next few days closes, unused doses of the Chinese CoronaVac vaccine will be sent to nearby towns.

Right now, as the portfolio page explains, in Uruguay, around 110,000 people have already been vaccinated and 165,026 are expected to do so.

Among those vaccinated are police officers, soldiers, firefighters, teachers and workers of the Institute for Childhood and Adolescence (INAU) under the age of 60, as well as citizens (regardless of their profession or of their at-risk situation) between 55 and 59 years and patients. on chronic dialysis or on the transplant waiting list.

However, people can book for a few more hours the number of vaccines that will be sent to border towns is therefore not yet known.

This Monday, after being vaccinated, Salinas explained to the press that in Brazil there is “a very serious problem“Because the P1 strain of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is mutating, which represents a challenge for Uruguay.

“We are threatened, in quotes, by the Brazilian epidemiological situation“, Affirmed the minister, who added:”How quickly we get vaccinated will be critical for our country’s virus to stop mutating. As the virus circulates, the virus mutates“.

At the moment, in Uruguay, there are 64,700 cumulative cases of coronavirus, 8,404 with an ongoing infection (including 87 in intensive care). In addition, since the health emergency was declared on March 13, 2020, 658 people died.

Regarding the five departments (provinces) bordering Brazil, most affected is Rivera where there are 650 active cases of COVID-19. There, according to data from the Uruguayan Interdisciplinary Group for COVID-19 Data Analysis, in the past seven days, there has been an average of 62.63 cases per 100,000 people, so this place is in the Harvard index red pandemic risk zone.

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