Two nurses were sent to preventive detention after being accused of the theft of 500 vaccines in a small town in northeastern Bolivia on the border with Brazil that suffers a re-outbreak of COVID-19 and that the authorities fear is due to the new Brazilian variant.

Prosecutor Javier Colque requested preventive detention for both women for 60 days during a hearing held on Saturday night in the small Amazonian city of Guayaramerín. The first tests, however, have not yet determined whether they are the authors of the theft.

The boxes sealed with the vaccines were stolen on Thursday from the Los Almendros health center in that town and although they were returned the next day by two hooded men who fled, the health authorities ruled out using them as useless because they were not protected by the cold chain said doctor Maicol Borches, coordinator of the Guayaramerín Health Network.

The case generated condemnations and criticism amid an urgency and a shortage of vaccines that forced the Ministry of Health to delay the mass vaccination of the population that should begin on April 1 to privilege the border areas with Brazil in an effort to counteract a possible spread of the new variant that is more contagious, according to experts.

The government ordered the closure of its vast border of more than 3,000 kilometers with Brazil.

As of Saturday, Bolivia accumulated 274,467 infections and 12,316 deaths due to the virus, and reports only 116,692 immunized with the second dose of the coronavirus vaccine in an estimated vaccinable population of 8 million people.

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