Panamanian President is vaccinated after a “hard” year of pandemic

The president of Panama, Laurentino Cortizo, applied the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday just as the Central American country took stock of the strong impact of COVID-19, one year after the first case reported in its territory.

“A hard year of pandemic”, declared the president after receiving the injection of Pfizer-BioNTech in a public school in the capital within the framework of the second week of immunization for people over 60 years of age.

The country of 4.3 million inhabitants reported its first infection in a 40-year-old woman from Spain on March 9, 2020, although a major Panamanian scientific research institute suggests that the disease would have arrived in February.

Panama is the Central American country that has reported the most infections since then, with 345,759 and 5,944 deaths as of Tuesday. In the number of deaths it is barely surpassed by Guatemala in the area.

In recent weeks it has seen a decline in the number of infections and deaths leading to a stabilization or “plateau” of infections, the national chief of epidemiology, Leonardo Labrador, said on Tuesday. The country also lifted quarantines on weekends in the provinces most affected by the virus, including Panama and the country’s capital.

Cortizo, 68, assumed his five-year term eight months before the incursion of the pandemic and experts consider that his management of the crisis was insufficient to prevent the strong community spread of the virus and stop the blow to the economy. The Gross Domestic Product contracted almost 18% in 2020, according to recently released official figures.

Panama has so far applied the vaccine to more than 210,000 people or about 2% of its population, including health workers on the front lines of the fight against coronavirus, with the four shipments received from Pfizer-BioNTech since January 19. . The fifth batch of 42,210 doses was expected to arrive at dawn on Wednesday.

Although it is a process that is just at the beginning of the second of four phases, the authorities consider that it is going at a good pace and organized. Cortizo said that this is also “conditional” on the delivery of the vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech, which according to the government have committed to completing a shipment of 450,000 doses in the first quarter of the year.