Panama approves emergency use of Chinese vaccine for COVID

Panama approved on Friday the emergency use of the CoronavaC vaccine against COVID-19 produced by the Chinese pharmaceutical company SinovaC, health authorities reported.

The head of the National Directorate of Pharmacies and Drugs of the Ministry of Health, Elvia Lau, said that the approval of the Chinese inoculation against the coronavirus is “one more opportunity for Panamanians to have another vaccine here in the country and that more people can be immunized and achieve herd immunity at some point”.

With the authorization of the Chinese drug, there are already four vaccines against COVID-19 approved for use in Panama. Of the first, Pfizer-BioNTech, some 478,000 doses have already been injected since January 20, when immunization began.

With 4.5 million inhabitants, the canal isthmus is one of the Central American countries hardest hit by the coronavirus.

However, for two months it has registered a decrease in infections and deaths. 394 new cases were reported, which now add up to 358,098, and 3 new deaths, which total 6,156. The country maintains a positivity percentage of 3.7%.

Panama has reached agreements for the acquisition of more than seven million vaccines against COVID-19 with different pharmaceutical companies. To date, it has only received just over half a million doses of the one from Pfizer-BioNTech, and it has also authorized the Russian Sputnik V and the Anglo-Swedish from AstraZeneca.