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During the television space ‘Prevention and Action’, President Iván Duque announced that in the first weeks of 2021 the vaccination campaign against the coronavirus would begin in Colombia.
President Duque announced that has closed bilateral negotiations with two pharmaceutical companies, one of them with Pfizer and with AstraZeneca each with 10 million doses.
In addition, through the Covax strategy, 20 million more doses would be achieved for a total of 40 million doses that will be distributed in five stages to the prioritized population.
THE PHASES
The prioritized populations will be 7’644,171 over 60 years, 5’334,153 over 16 years with nine comorbidities such as hypertension, diabetes and cancer; and the health personnel who are 1,217,971. That in total gives 11,035,970 million Colombians.
This process, according to the described timeline, It began last June with conversations with different pharmaceutical companies and adherence to the COVAX mechanism and will be projected until December 2021 in different stages.
According to the schedules, the vaccination will begin in the first weeks of January in test mode and in a massive way from February, when it is planned to apply a little less than two million doses to the prioritized populations.
According to the information provided, the available doses will be those provided by the agreements with Pfizer and AstraZeneca, which total 20 million doses, of which at least half would be available in February. And it is expected that by the end of March the first batch of those delivered by the COVAX strategy will be completed. Those from AstraZeneca will arrive in April.
Under the proposed scheme, it is expected to cover at least 70 percent of the Colombian population, which would provide useful immunity against the coronavirus. By subtracting the 1.5 million reported cases of covid-19 so far, it would give a total of 34.2 million citizens eligible to immunize.
And taking into account that there are 40 million doses available to vaccinate 20 million people, between phase 1 and the beginning of phase 2, 58.4 percent of the population will have been covered.
VACCINATION BY STAGES
In the first stage of vaccination, it is contemplated to immunize 100 percent of health workers and support personnel in the first line, as well as all those over 80 years of age in the national territory. They add 1,691,366 people.
In a second stage 7,192,701 citizens are expected to be vaccinated, which is 100 percent of the population aged 60 to 79 years and all second and third line health workers.
The third stage seeks to immunize another 2,950,431 people: the entire population aged 16 to 59 with comorbidities and 100 percent of the teachers of basic and secondary education.
In a fourth stage, the vaccines would be applied to 4,910,000 Colombians, among institutional caregivers and the entire population in occupations and risk situations.
Finally, the 17,490,151 people between 16 and 59 years old without comorbidities will receive the vaccines, in order from oldest to youngest.
THE STRATEGY
Initially, the prioritized population will be identified, for which the official databases and those of the insurance companies will be used. Each person will be assigned a date and time of care and will be referred to a specific IPS where before the procedure all doubts will be explained and an informed consent will be signed. Subsequently, the person will be vaccinated, a record will be made and a vaccination card will be delivered for the next appointment.
LOGISTICS
The Minister of Health, Fernando Ruiz, also explained the logistics that each of these vaccines will have for their reception and transport to the application sites, all this based on the structure that the country already has installed from its Expanded Immunization Program (EPI), which each year immunizes millions of people against different diseases.
In the case of the conventional vaccine (that of Oxford and AstraZeneca), the route for the distribution of vaccines throughout the national territory that is already defined will be favored. And in particular, The doses will be received at the El Dorado airport in containers that will go directly to a warehouse located in the Bogota Free Zone, near the air terminal.
The nationalization process will be carried out simultaneously with the storage and this will take place in a warehouse that has 2,000 square meters. In a 600 square meter segment of said warehouse, syringes and diluents will be stored, and in another equal space the vaccines will be stored in a deep freezer (-20 degrees Celsius), which is also used to preserve the biological against polio.
“The warehouse allows to store 50 million doses of vaccines. However, operating at full capacity, it has 50 percent of the available area, ”said Ruiz.
From there the doses will be distributed to departments and districts, clarifying that the country has 37 warehouses for the storage of vaccines with these characteristics, all certified by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and Invima.
It is expected that from these warehouses they will go to 2,900 vaccination points where they will be applied by 7,600 vaccinators that the PAI has.
For Pfizer’s deep-frozen vaccine the logistics are different. This will be taken by the pharmaceutical company from its plants in the United States or Belgium directly to sites determined by the Ministry of Health. In the event that additional deep freezing is required in the logistics chain, eight freezers will be available in seven cities (two in Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Cartagena and Pereira).
Ruiz explained that to activate the vaccine it must go from deep freezing to refrigeration and for that purpose it will go through the conventional cold chain for five days. At that time, the place and time of the vaccination should be clear.
