Bolivia received the first batch of 228,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine against the new coronavirus on Sunday through the COVAX mechanism of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Before the arrival, the Pan American Health Organization / World Health Organization (PAHO / WHO) issued a statement recommending the use of the vials. The document explains that the doses that arrived in the Andean country are not the same that led some European countries to temporarily suspend the inoculation as a precautionary measure based on reports of “rare blood clotting disorders.”
The vaccines, from the Serum laboratory in India, were brought to Bolivia on a Bolivian Air Force plane from Miami, United States, and were received by the Minister of Health, Jeyson Auza, Foreign Minister Rodolfo Mayta, the representative of the WHO / PAHO, Alma Morales and the representative of UNICEF in Bolivia.
“COVAX is a great effort, but it is insufficient, vaccines should be a common good and not a commodity, it should not be a vehicle to generate more wealth,” Mayta said at a press conference.
Morales explained that this is the first batch but that the 672,000 doses committed to the country are expected to be completed by April.
“At the end of the month (March) we expect 108,000 to arrive and in the second week of April more than 300,000 doses,” he added.
Bolivia began a massive vaccination at the beginning of March, vaccinating 148,588 people, mostly health personnel and risk groups.
The Andean country has a population of more than 11 million inhabitants, so the government of President Luis Arce has contacted several laboratories, including the Russian that manufactures the Sputnik-V, the Chinese Sinopharm and the American Pfizer.
“There are companies that have made us sign acceptable contracts, but there are also unacceptable ones like Pfizer,” said the chancellor.
So far in Bolivia there have been more than 264,000 cases of the new coronavirus and 12,051 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Science and Systems Engineering.