Bolivia reports 639 new Covid cases and receives more Sinopharm vaccines (August 2)

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Bolivia reported this Monday 639 new covid-19 infections on a day in which a new batch of 500,000 vaccines from the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinopharm arrived in the country as part of a purchase by the National Executive and the forthcoming arrival of another 300,000 doses donated by the Chinese government was announced.

The Bolivian Ministry of Health also reported 20 deaths, bringing to 17,859 the number of deaths accumulated since March 2020. The national total of cases rose to 474,538, with the new infections reported today.

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The regions with the highest number of new positives were Santa Cruz, with 267, and Cochabamba, with 136, while cases ranged from three to 96 in the other Bolivian departments, the report said.

So far, 1,691,896 people have completed the vaccination scheme against covid-19 in Bolivia, and another 2,893,680 received the first dose.

Since the end of January, the country has been applying a vaccination plan that began with front-line health personnel and was progressively extended to include people over 18 years of age and pregnant women from the second week of July.

Bolivia is in the process of de-escalation of the third wave that began at the beginning of May, with days in which infections exceeded 3,000 at its most critical point.

This day was also marked by the arrival of another half million vaccines against covid-19 produced by the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinopharm as part of a purchase of six million doses announced by the Government of Luis Arce at the end of June.

The shipment arrived in a plane of the state-owned airline Boliviana de Aviación (BoA) that landed at Jorge Wilstermann airport in the central city of Cochabamba.

Arce highlighted in a message on Twitter the arrival of these drugs and two million syringes acquired “directly from the manufacturers”.

“With this batch, there are already more than 8 million doses that arrived in Bolivia. Our fight against Covid-19 has no truce,” wrote the ruler.

The total mentioned by Arce includes the Sinopharm vaccines, in addition to the Russian Sputnik V and those obtained through the United Nations Covax mechanism, which are the Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Janssen.

In another message, the Bolivian President announced that 300,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccines would arrive this Friday, of which 100,000 will be applied to “Bolivian Army recruits and personnel”.

These doses are a donation from the Chinese Government, whose “solidarity and cooperation” with the Bolivian fight against the pandemic were highlighted on Twitter by the Vice Minister of Foreign Trade, Benjamín Blanco.