The Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance reported this Monday, October 4, that they are waiting for the arrival of more vaccines to Guatemala to fully open the immunization of minors between 12 and 17 years of age, since currently only those who are vaccinated are suffer from some comorbidity. They also gave details about the approval of Sputnik V by the WHO and the cases of adverse effects in the country.
Francisco Coma, Minister of Health, reported that in the next few days – without specifying a date – a new batch of Pfizer vaccines will arrive in the country, which will be used to inoculate minors between 12 and 17 years of age.
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“The initial objective is to vaccinate children between 12 and 17 years old with comorbidities, what happens is that if the population arrives and there is a vaccine, we will not stop vaccinating children who are well incentivized,” Coma said.
He added that “we already have notification of vaccine entry a little later and we will continue with the opening of the complete plan”; in addition, he explained that Pfizer is used for minors and that to date they do not have exact data on how many minors have been vaccinated, since “as we have a community vaccination strategy, it is difficult to enter the data.”
He reiterated that they await confirmation of the date of entry of the biological, “but we hope it will be very soon,” said Coma, who added that the portfolio he directs still has Q700 million available for the purchase of vaccines.
With reference to the US warning not to allow the entry into its territory of people who have been vaccinated with Sputnik V, Comas said that there is no official notification and that, in light of this, the Russian authorities have reported that this inoculant is in the final phase of being approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization (WHO).
“There is no official notification from any country at this time and according to what was reported by the Russian authorities, it is already in a final approval process.”
Coma reminded the population that “we have a very aggressive variant of the virus and therefore the only thing that would save us from dying or getting seriously ill is getting vaccinated.”
Also read: October begins with the highest number of deaths from covid-19 in two weeks: 75 daily
He also spoke about the cases of adverse reactions in Guatemala, and said that they have several mild and two complicated cases, which are being followed up.
“If there are reports of cases, but there is a committee that is in charge of verifying them, 95% of the cases are very mild, and only two cases that are more serious,” said Coma.
Data error
According to Coma, due to human error, the update dashboard data from October 3 was incorrectly updated, because the person in charge did not exhaust the established processes for verifying the numbers.
He added that, due to the error, the person in charge is already subject to an administrative process.
“Unfortunately whoever entered the data did not apply the filters correctly, he was careless in his work, unfortunately this person did not comply with staggering the information for it to be reviewed and is already in an administrative process,” said the official.
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