Santo Domingo, RD.
More than a year has passed since the World Health Organization (WHO) formally announced the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and hundreds of new infections continue to be reported daily in the Dominican Republic.
Faced with this situation, the Dominican Government mobilized in search of obtaining vaccines to be able to immunize the population, with the aim of eventually returning to normality.
Hundreds of millions of pesos were invested in the acquisition of vaccines, with contracts agreed with various pharmaceutical companies and international programs, which to date have resulted in around 12,186,000 doses received.
Of these, almost all have been acquired by negotiating with China, mainly those made by the Sinovac laboratory. In total there are 10,768,000 doses that have arrived from this company, in multiple shipments, the first being on February 23 of this year.
That batch consisted of 768,000 doses, arriving in the country at 7:45 pm that day on a flight from Paris, France.
“We are making every effort to receive the amount of doses necessary to vaccinate the entire Dominican people as soon as possible,” said the Vice President of the Republic, Raquel Peña.
A month later the vice president was also present to receive another shipment. On this occasion containing 1 million of the Sinovac product and 50 thousand of Sinopharm, the latter input presented as a donation from the Asian giant.
April 21 was the arrival date of the third batch of Sinovac, this one of 500 thousand inoculations, to continue the governmental efforts of the National Vaccination Plan “VacúnateRD”.
After 14 days, two planes brought 2,000,000 more vaccines, which were incorporated into the aforementioned plan, in order to start immunizing people over 18 years of age.
At the end of May, 1 million doses were received by the Dominican health authorities, which were accompanied by three million syringes.
That same amount also arrived on June 3, while Sinovac shipped 1.5 million vaccines on June 16.
The most recent of all touched Dominican soil just two days ago, and it was the largest shipment so far, this being three million vaccines.
Pfizer
The country agreed to a contract valued at US $ 119,999,880 with the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, for 9,999,990 doses, of which 644,410 have arrived.
This amount was achieved after the shipment of three batches this month.
The first shipment was 228,150 doses, received by government representatives last Friday, June 11, while the second was 208,260, which landed just a week later.
On Friday, June 25, 208,000 new inoculations from the American company landed.
These vaccines have the particularity that they are used in minors who are over 12 years old, again expanding the population group that contemplated the original vaccination plan.
“Today we received the second batch from Pfizer and BioNTech with 208,260 doses of vaccines to include in # VacúnateRD. With this arrival we continue to vaccinate all ages, including adolescents and pregnant women. Every day we are getting closer to returning to our normality!” the vice president of the Republic at that time.
COVAX
The administration chaired by Luis Abinader agreed with the Global Equitable Access Fund to Vaccines against COVID-19 (COVAX), promoted by the WHO and administered by the Gavi vaccine alliance, for some 2,169,600 vaccines.
This agreement has an approximate value of US $ 22,889,280 (more than 1,300 million pesos).
Of the total agreed, 278,200 have been shipped, divided into two shipments, the first of 91,200 doses of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine, manufactured by the SK Bioscience laboratory in South Korea, which arrived in the country on April 6.
The second arrived on May 15. In that batch there were 187,000 vaccines, also from the Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca.
Covishield
The first vaccines to reach the country were Covishield, developed in India using the AstraZeneca formula. The first batch, of 20 thousand, has an arrival date of February 15 and only four days later 30 thousand more arrived, as a donation by the government of India.
More vaccines
On Wednesday, June 23, Abinader announced that in the course of next month the country will receive a large shipment of seven million doses of anticovid vaccines, although the pharmaceutical company that will supply the input did not specify.
He also reported that from now on a batch of 200,000 doses of Pfizer’s product will arrive every Friday.
Vaccinated
According to the latest report offered by the Expanded Program on Immunization (PAI) of the Dominican Republic, 7 million of the 11.5 million doses received since last February have already been supplied.
Of that number, at least 2.3 million people have already been vaccinated twice, the amount required to protect themselves against COVID-19, according to international health authorities.
AstraZeneca
The Dominican Republic received the number 1 shipment from the European company on Wednesday. There were 478,000 doses of AstraZeneca, after several months of delay in the delivery of the inoculations.
The country’s agreement with this company, which developed its vaccine together with the University of Oxford, establishes the monthly arrival of certain batches every 21st from March. In total, 10 million doses were agreed, at about $ 40 million.
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