Covid-19: Bolivia to vaccinate children aged five to eleven

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Bolivia will begin this Thursday (9) to vaccinate against Covid-19 children from five to eleven years of age, thus increasing the target population to more than 10 million people, President Luis Arce announced Wednesday.

“We have decided that starting tomorrow, Thursday, December 9, vaccination against covid-19 will also reach children between five and eleven years of age,” the president said in a message broadcast by state media and social networks.

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“The immunization scheme will be the same as for other age groups: two doses 21 days apart,” added Arce.

The Bolivian government estimates that 1.6 million children in this age range will be given vaccines from Sinopharm and Pfizer.

Including this group in the vaccination campaign allowed the population to be immunized in the nation of 11.5 million inhabitants, which has accumulated 546,000 infections and more than 19,000 deaths due to the pandemic, to 10.2 million.

Bolivia has applied 8.8 million doses of Sinopharm, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Sputnik V, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines to people over 12 years. Those under 18 years of age have received 508,000 doses.

More than 3.2 million Bolivians have already received both doses, and almost 900,000 have received only the first dose. In addition, nearly one million received the single Janssen dose, and another 396,000 received the third (booster) dose from AstraZeneca, which is only applied to adults with “basic diseases”.