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Chile and Costa Rica will begin the rollout of coronavirus vaccines on Thursday, joining Mexico to be among the first Latin American countries to begin mass immunization campaigns.
Mexico began a mass vaccination program on Thursday, and a nurse was the first to receive the vaccine in the country with one of the highest death toll from COVID-19 in the world.
The televised launch came a day after the first 3,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine arrived on a courier plane from Belgium.
Meanwhile, the first 10,000 doses of a 10 million order of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived in Chile on Thursday with the inoculation of health workers in the most affected sectors to begin immediately.
Chile is the first South American country to start vaccinating against COVID. Costa Rica also received its first shipment of doses from Pfizer on Wednesday, while Argentina awaited the first doses of the Russian Sputnik COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday.
Chilean President Sebastián Piñera watches as workers take the first batch of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to a helicopter, while the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak continues, at the Santiago International Airport , in Santiago, Chile December 24, 2020 REUTERS / Ivan AlvaradoChilean President Sebastián Piñera said the country has obtained 30 million coronavirus vaccines from three suppliers, enough to inoculate 15 million people, more than two-thirds of the population, in the first half of 2021.
The doses arrived at the Santiago airport from Pfizer’s manufacturing center, the Belgian city of Puurs, shortly before 7 am local time (10:00 GMT) on Christmas Eve, according to a statement from the presidency.
The doses were transferred by police helicopter to a logistics center in the capital Santiago, and the vaccinations would begin later in the morning.
A health worker in personal protective equipment (PPE) takes a swab from a woman for a rapid COVID-19 test during the COVID-19 outbreak in Viña del Mar, Chile [Rodrigo Garrido/Reuters]
Chile is among the Latin American countries that have closed the most bilateral agreements with pharmaceutical companies, including agreements with AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Sinovac, as well as the global COVAX vaccine distribution scheme.
Meanwhile, Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada told a press conference that vaccinations would begin there on Thursday.
“It may be the beginning of the end of this pandemic,” he added.
The Costa Rican president was at the Juan Santamaría airport in the capital San José to receive a flight that delivered the first 9,750 doses of the vaccine, which arrived at 9:00 p.m. (03:00 GMT on Thursday).
Costa Rica announced last week that it had approved the vaccine, and health workers and the elderly are now expected to be the first to receive injections.
The country of about 5 million people had registered more than 160,000 coronavirus cases as of Wednesday, with 2,065 deaths.
Like many others in the region, its healthcare system has come under great pressure from the number of infections.
Medical staff expect to receive the first of two injections with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine at the General Hospital of Mexico City [Edgard Garrido/Reuters]
Particularly affected have been Brazil and Mexico, which became the first Latin American country to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Wednesday.
The Central American country now has more people hospitalized for COVID-19 than it saw at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in late July.
The Health Department says that 18,301 people are in hospitals throughout Mexico receiving treatment for the disease that may be caused by the coronavirus. That is 0.4 percent more than in July.
Mexico City, the capital, is the epicenter of the current wave of infections and 85 percent of its hospital beds are in use.
At Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, portable refrigerators are loaded with doses of Sputnik V COVID vaccine [Argentina Presidency/Handout via Reuters]
The state of Morelos, south of the capital, became the fourth of Mexico’s 32 states to declare a “red” alert, which will lead to a partial shutdown and the closure of non-essential businesses starting Thursday.
Mexico has recorded more than 1.3 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 120,000 deaths related to the disease, the fourth highest number of deaths in the world, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
Medical personnel will be first in line Thursday when vaccinations with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine begin in Mexico City.
Elsewhere in Latin America, Argentina will receive 25 million doses of the controversial Russian Sputnik V vaccine on Thursday.
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