The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) announced on Wednesday that it reached an agreement with the Chinese pharmaceutical Sinovac for market at American continent about 8.5 million doses against Covid-19 this year through its revolving fund for the sale of vaccines.
The Director of PAHO, Carissa Etienne, indicated during a press conference that they have already begun to accept the first orders from the countries, “which will be ready for delivery this year,” and anticipated that they hope to reach more agreements of this type in the next days with other pharmaceutical companies.
The deputy director of the OPS, Jarbas Barbosa, explained that the agreement with Sinovac it closed last week and remarked that it is “a purchase, not a donation.” Barbosa explained that so far about 24 countries in the region have requested doses for this year and for 2022 within the framework of this agreement, adding that Sinovac has offered 8.5 million vaccines for the remainder of 2021 and more than 80 million by 2022.
He also anticipated that they are in a “fairly advanced negotiation” with two other vaccine manufacturers that he did not identify and that he estimated would probably conclude this week or next.
These laboratories, Barbosa added, “have also offered vaccines for the last quarter of 2021 and for the year 2022.” On the other hand, Barbosa reported that the mechanism Covax, led among others by the World Health Organization (WHO) For the distribution of vaccines against Covid-19, a “reassignment round” of 120 million doses will begin in October between countries that have less than 10% of their population immunized.
In this first round, three countries of the continent Haiti, Nicaragua and Jamaica they will see benefited. The PAHO Deputy Director explained that Covax It also announced that in next November or December it will reallocate 50% of 600 million doses among ten countries whose vaccination rate is less than 20%.
This percentage has been defined as the minimum coverage required to protect the most vulnerable populations, Barbosa pointed out.
About the situation in Nicaragua, Director of PAHO Health Emergencies, Ciro Ugarte, said that this country is expected to receive tomorrow, Thursday, 138,000 doses of the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm and for mid-October the donation of 233,000 doses from Pfizer.
Ugarte pointed out that the data they have on the number of cases or deaths in that country are still very brief, so he made a request for the population to “receive sufficient information” on the pandemic.
When referring to VenezuelaUgarte pointed out that health services do not report being saturated and detailed that the curve of the disease “shows a stability or a slight tendency to increase compared to other countries” in South America.
In any case, he stated that in that country “the numbers are significantly lower compared to those reported in other countries.” PAHO revealed that in the last week it was reported in America of almost 1.5 million new infections and more than 26,000 deaths related to the virus, which, he warned, exceeds “any other region in the world.”
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