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While Colombia receives the first batch of vaccines, countries such as Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Argentina have been immunizing the population for days. This is how these processes go.
Colombia received this Monday a first batch of 50,000 vaccines for its mass immunization campaign against the coronavirus, which will begin on February 20. But in the region, several countries already have an advantage. With more than 639,000 deaths (20 million infected), the Latin American and Caribbean region is the second most affected in the world, behind Europe 803,017 deaths) and ahead of the United States and Canada (505,744). The University of Oxford keeps the record of vaccinations in the world and, according to its count, Chile leads the region with 8.39 doses per 100 people, followed by Brazil, with 2.07 doses, Costa Rica, Argentina and finally Mexico.
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Although Latin America was filled with hope with the start of vaccination at the end of December in Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Costa Rica, the forecasts of most governments have not been fulfilled due to the non-compliance of the pharmaceutical companies with which they signed contracts or because of the logistical difficulties they have encountered.
Chile, role model
As a model to follow, experts have described the work of Chile, where more than 1.5 million people have been vaccinated with at least one dose since the mass immunization began on February 3.
The figure is good for the South American nation, which has 19 million inhabitants, and has earned it worldwide recognition. After 11 days of mass vaccination in Chile against COVID-19, more than 1.8 million people have received at least their first dose, more than half over 71 years, according to the authorities.
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With an average of more than 180,000 vaccinated per day, the South American country maintains a favorable pace to reach the goal of 5 million vaccinated by the end of March and the final goal of ending the first quarter of the year with 15 million people immunized against the coronavirus , out of a total of 18 million inhabitants.
The vaccination plan has so far managed to administer two doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech substance to some 50,000 people, mostly health personnel who began to be vaccinated on December 24, when the first vaccines arrived in the country. And the campaign that began on February 3 comes after receiving from China almost four million doses of CoronaVac vaccine, from the Sinovac laboratory.
Health Minister Enrique Paris, who was vaccinated for the first time on Friday, like President Sebastián Piñera, stressed that almost all of Chile’s health personnel are already vaccinated.
Paris added that starting this Monday, basic and secondary education professionals will be included in the vaccination schedule, starting with those over 60 years of age. However, university professors were left out of this plan.
The country has maintained an average of 4,000 new daily infections for weeks and deaths fluctuate between 50 and 100. In total, Chile has accumulated 772,395 cases and 19,443 deaths since March 3, when the first outbreak of covid-19 was registered.
According to the authorities, the government of Chile has committed nearly 300 million dollars in vaccines with different laboratories around the world. It reached agreements to buy about 36 million doses with Pfizer, Sinovac, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca.
Mexico
It was one of the first countries in the world to apply the Pfizer and BioNTech drug on December 24, so far it has only received about 767,000 doses, preventing its goal of immunizing all front-line medical personnel with 1,4 million units in January.
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On February 10, the Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks of Mexico authorized the emergency use of COVID vaccines from Chinese pharmaceutical companies CanSino and Sinovac to try to take another step in that direction.
Thus, the country, of 126 million inhabitants, has pre-purchase agreements for 34.4 million doses of Pfizer, 77.4 million of the British AstraZeneca, 35 million of CanSino, 24 million of the Russian Sputnik V and 51, 5 million from the Covax platform, promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO). The problem now is that they arrive at the agreed times.
After several weeks with the vaccination plan stalled, Mexico received a shipment of almost a million drugs from AstraZeneca with which it will finally be able to start immunization of adults over 60 years old this Monday.
In an unusual morning press conference held on Sunday, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced that this Monday the vaccination of people over 60 will start in 333 municipalities of the 32 states of the country, prioritizing the poorest towns.
“We made this decision to start in all states, in the most remote and marginalized municipalities, with the poorest population in the country,” said the president. The Mexican Army has already begun distributing the vaccines, of which only 87,257 remained in Mexico City, while the rest were sent to the states through eight air routes.
Although there are still few doses available to Mexico, López Obrador was convinced that the next scheduled shipments will allow the 15.7 million Mexicans over 60 years of age to be vaccinated with the first dose “in mid-April.”
Likewise, the president, 67 years old and hypertensive, did not clarify if he will be vaccinated soon, as he left the decision in the hands of his doctors, since he has just overcome COVID-19 and considers that he has “protection.”
Brazil
The second country in America most affected by the pandemic, after the United States, the Minister of Health, Eduardo Pazuello, declared that “the entire population” will be immunized this year and that, although the Amazon variant is “three times” more contagious, existing vaccines fight it.
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With 236,200 deaths and almost 10 million cases, the minister said he expects “50% of the population” of the country, of 210 million inhabitants, to be vaccinated in the first half of 2021 and the other 50% during the second. The vaccination campaign against COVID-19 in Brazil, where the immunization of the population began late, on January 20, is already threatened by the lack of doses, according to information from the authorities of several states.
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It is not the only threat, the vaccine unleashed a political war that was clearly defeated: Jair Bolsonaro. In the photo of the beginning of the vaccination, the governor of the state of São Paulo, João Doria, appeared, not the president.
In Rio de Janeiro (southeast), the Brazilian city with the most deaths (almost 20,000 since the start of the pandemic), the mayor’s office warned in a statement that it only has enough doses to vaccinate “until Saturday.” “We expect the arrival of new doses next week. If not, the vaccination will be interrupted, “the note said.
In two cities on the periphery of Rio, Sao Gonçalo and Niteroi, vaccination has already been suspended for several days. The same occurs with Salvador de Bahía (northeast), which has interrupted the immunization of health professionals and has delayed the start of immunization of people between 80 and 84 years old, which was due to begin this week.
In the state of Sao Paulo, the richest and most populous state in this country of 212 million inhabitants, health authorities also had to postpone the start of vaccination for that age group until March 1.
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So far, about 12 million doses of vaccines – the CoronaVac from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac and that of the Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca – have been distributed to all Brazilian states and more than 4.5 million people have already been vaccinated.
According to the newspaper O Globo, 70% of the remaining doses are reserved to ensure that those already vaccinated receive the second dose.
The distribution of new doses of CoronaVac should resume on February 23, after the arrival in recent days in Sao Paulo of supplies from China that will allow the production of more than 17 million units. More than 2.7 million doses of AstraZeneca should also be available in March.
