RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Ecuador began its vaccination against Covid-19 on Thursday, January 21st, with the administration of doses at the Pablo Arturo Suarez Hospital in Quito, after the country received the first shipment from Pfizer.
A total of 138 people were vaccinated at this medical center in the Ecuadorian capital, according to the Efe news agency.
In parallel, Minister of Public Health Juan Carlos Zevallos presided over the official ceremony of the start of vaccination from the coastal city of Guayaquil, where he administered the first vaccines, said the portfolio.
In the so-called “phase zero” of the vaccination plan in Ecuador, which began yesterday, front-line healthcare workers were voluntarily vaccinated against the disease, as well as elderly people in nursing homes and their caregivers.
In nearly eleven months, the coronavirus has infected over 234,000 people and caused 9,810 confirmed deaths in the country.
Pfizer plans to deliver some 86,000 doses by the end of February, out of a total of two million, the bulk of which will be delivered from next March, when the population will undergo another mass vaccination phase.
The first vaccines arrived on Wednesday in Quito, Guayaquil and Cuenca, and from these cities they should be distributed to the 19 vaccination points set up in this first phase across the country and until the end of February.
The Ecuadorian government has announced that it will invest some US$200 million in the purchase of vaccines against Covid-19, which will be distributed by September or October, to immunize some nine million inhabitants, 60 percent of the Andean country’s population.
Two million doses will be purchased from the Pfizer/BioNtech consortium, four million from the British AstraZeneca, four million from the Covaxx company, and another eight million from the COVAX initiative coordinated by the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), according to the Ministry of Health..