This will be the Vaccination Plan against Covid-19 in Chocó

For the arrival of the vaccines to Colombia, which will be on February 20, it is estimated that an average of 337,000 of the 1.1 million vaccines that the country has purchased so far to combat covid-19 will be received. These are from different pharmaceutical laboratories, according to the Ministry of Health.

The largest batch of the drug will arrive from the AstraZeneca company, which will provide a total of 750,000 doses purchased through the Covax mechanism. Sinovac, the second laboratory that was authorized by Colombia to provide vaccines against the Coronavirus, will deliver 192,000 doses of its medicine.

On the other hand, Pfizer will provide 117,000 vaccines that were obtained through Covax and 100,000 that were finalized after a bilateral agreement with President Iván Duque.

Minister Fernando Ruiz, in the Prevention and Action program, reported that the advisory body for vaccination, which is in charge of defining the distribution criteria, met on February 11 and established that the doses will be distributed to the regions according to the proportion of the population prioritized in each of the stages.

Under this criteria, Chocó will initially receive 540 doses of the Pfize drug.r, which will be applied to health professionals in charge of attending the pandemic. They can only be applied in Quibdó, capital of the region, due to storage specifications, which complicates distribution to other remote areas.

Naudy Ortega Urrego, secretary of Health of the department explained that, “we still do not know how many of the vaccines that the department will receive are from Pfizer, for now, the 540 that will arrive for the first day are from this pharmaceutical company.”

The region awaits the arrival of more than 67,600 rations to complete the three stages of phase one. The plan is to protect front-line personnel and gradually advance with the rest of the health personnel, adults over 80 years of age, patients with underlying diseases and then continue with the rest of the population as specified in the Vaccination Plan and has explained in repeated concessions minister of health.

Initially, the vaccines for Chocó will reach Antioquia, which has so far adapted seven freezers. The transfer will be made from the José María Córdova airport in Rionegro to two cellars available to the Ministry of Health in Campo Valdés and Guayabal. From there they will be distributed in small refrigerators to medical centers where they will be able to stay for five days.

Ortega, confirmed that they already have the personnel for vaccination, as well as the infrastructure to store the vaccines that will arrive from the capital of Antioquia.

“We have the staff ready, there will be a coordinator of the entire process, someone in charge of the information in the systems and engineers who will support the process. The IPS will be in charge of storing the doses, in the case of remote regions, only conventional vaccines will be available, “he said.

In Chocó, more than 6,400 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed, of which 298 are still active.