Bolivia received 1.9 million Modern vaccines against covid-19 donated by Spain and Germany this Saturday that will serve as third doses and with this batch the country has enough vaccines to immunize its vaccinable population.
This Saturday morning, a plane from the Boliviana de Aviación (Boa) plane arrived at the Jorge Wilstermann airport in the Cochabamba plant with 1,965,600 Moderna doses through the United Nations Covax mechanism.
The Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade, Benjamin Blanco, explained that 1,492,800 doses were donated by Spain and 472,800 from Germany that will serve to reinforce the vaccination plan and that will be used as third doses.
With this batch of vaccines, Bolivia has a total of more than 22.5 million doses that are enough to immunize the entire vaccinable population, which is 10.2 million, indicated Blanco.
“We have all the vaccines that we require, now the challenge is to use them, we are going for more than 9.5 million doses used, that means that we have approximately 13 million doses unused,” the deputy minister stressed.
He explained that the Moderna doses received have already been tested as “booster doses” and that they are more than 90% effective in two doses and that the immunity time is at least six months.
In the same way, he recalled that from today the presentation of the vaccination card will be required to enter public and private places or a negative PCR test, for which he urged the population to go to the vaccination points and thus avoid complications of the covid -19.
“More than 95% of people who have not been vaccinated are those who are in intensive care,” he said.
Bolivia is in the throes of contagion from the fourth wave with record numbers of daily cases throughout the pandemic that exceeded 7,000 positives and the eastern region of Santa Cruz is the hardest hit.
Last week the Bolivian government decided to declare a health emergency and urged the population to reinforce biosecurity measures and get vaccinated.
Bolivia managed to apply more than 9.8 million doses between the first, second, and booster doses, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Health, and the population over 5 years of age is immunized.
In the country, Sinopharm and Sputnik V vaccines are used, which have been acquired by the Government, and those from AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Janssen, which have been donated to the country through the Covax mechanism.
