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President Iván Duque announced that Colombia closed negotiations with Pfizer, Aztrazeneca and other pharmaceutical companies and officially acquired 40 million doses.
President Iván Duque announced during his traditional Prevention and Action program dedicated to informing about the pandemic, that the country closed agreements and will acquire a total of 40 million doses.
A first agreement was signed with Pfizer to acquire 10 million doses of the vaccine manufactured using messenger RNA technology that has already been approved in Europe and the United States. President Duque also announced another agreement closed with the Aztrazeneca-Oxford laboratory for 10 million doses. In the case of Aztrazeneca, the vaccine was made using a genetically modified virus as a base.
To these 20 million doses are added another 20 million doses that were acquired through a joint negotiation mechanism with other countries known as Covax. This means that adding the 40 million doses, the country would have the capacity to vaccinate around 20 million people.
Health Minister Fernando Ruiz reported that mass vaccination will begin in February and the initial tests would be in January.
President Duque pointed out that the vaccine will be free for the entire Colombian population. A principle of solidarity will be taken into account, which implies that some people will receive first than others depending on their vulnerability. It will be a progressive coverage and the general interest must always prevail over the individual.
“This is a technical plan,” said Minister Ruiz.
In the first phase of vaccination, the objective is to reduce mortality from COVID-19, reduce the incidence of serious cases, and protect health personnel. In the second phase, the objective will be to reduce cases in the entire population to achieve a phenomenon known as herd immunity.
People over 60 years of age, people with comorbidities (hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, severe respiratory diseases, HIV, hepatitis C, tuberculosis, obesity and cancer) and health personnel will be the main criteria to define the vaccination schedule in the first phase . Regarding health personnel, all persons who support the work within hospital units will also be included.
According to Ruiz, based on different databases, we already have the names of all the people who will receive the vaccine in that first phase.
To generate herd immunity, almost 36 million Colombians need to be vaccinated. At this moment there are about a million and a half people who have already been diagnosed with COVID-19 and therefore these people would not be included in the first phases of vaccination because it is assumed that their immune system is already prepared to protect itself from infection .
The vaccination will have five stages. In the first, health workers and front-line assistants will be vaccinated. Also those over 80 years of age for having the highest risk. The second stage will be focused on those over 60 and second-line health workers. The third stage would correspond to people between 16 and under 60 with comorbidities. At this stage, 100% of basic education teachers will be included. Fourth stage would be institutional caregivers and people of different risks. The fifth stage would be the rest of the population.
News in development ….
