RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In Latin America and the Caribbean, only one in 10 people has been vaccinated against Covid-19 even though cases continue to rise and the threat posed by new disease variants circulating in the region.
This and five other news items of the week make up the key facts about vaccination in the Americas:
URGENT CALL
The director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Carissa F. Etienne, called on the G7 countries to prioritize Latin America and the Caribbean when it comes to donating one billion vaccines.
The reason is simple. Only one in ten people has been vaccinated in this part of the world, where “hospitals are full, variants are circulating rapidly,” and “vaccines are urgently needed today,” said Etienne.
According to the official, “the countries that are suffering the most should be at the front of the line” to receive biological donations.
In reporting on the lethal trajectory of the pandemic, the PAHO director stressed that in the last week, more than 1.1 million new cases and 31,000 deaths were recorded in the Americas, including the United States and Canada.
DELTA VARIANT, IN THE SIGHTS OF THE U.S.
U.S. President Joe Biden warned Friday that the Delta variant of the coronavirus would do “a lot of damage” in some areas of his country if the vaccination campaign, which has slowed down in recent weeks, does not move forward soon.
“We won’t end up having to confine anything, but in some areas, it will do a lot of damage,” the president said.
That variant, identified for the first time in India and highly contagious, already accounts for 10% of all Covid-19 cases detected in the United States, so health authorities are very concerned about a repeat of the situation in the United Kingdom, where that variant is already prevalent and has delayed plans to reopen that country.
In the meantime, the United States surpassed 300 million vaccine doses administered in 150 days since Biden took office on January 20.
FEWER SANCTIONS, MORE VACCINES
The U.S. government eased on Thursday some economic sanctions against Venezuela to allow the acquisition of pandemic-related materials, such as vaccines, masks, oxygen tanks, or ventilators, according to the Treasury Department.
The decision comes after a review within Joe Biden’s administration to assess whether the sanctions “are unduly hampering responses to the pandemic” by affected countries.
In the specific case of Venezuela, the Treasury Department detailed that the measure will allow sanctioned entities such as the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV), Banco de Venezuela, and Banco Bicentenario and their subsidiaries to carry out this type of transaction.
So far, the Caribbean country has said it has received 3.23 million vaccine doses. The Government expects to complete 22 million more doses to immunize 70% of the Venezuelan population.
VACCINATION AT THE BORDER
The Mexican government released this week in Baja California state the first doses of the 1.35 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines donated by the United States to reopen the border, closed to non-essential travel for 15 months. The authorities set up 16 vaccination points in the 6 municipalities of the state.
With more than 230,000 deaths and almost 2.5 million official infections, Mexico is the fourth country globally in terms of the number of deaths from covid-19.
So far, Mexico has only provided a little more than 38 million doses of different vaccines. More than 15 million citizens have completed their vaccination schedule in a country of 126 million inhabitants.
ARGENTINA MAKES PROGRESS, LOCAL MANUFACTURE OF SPUTNIK-V
Argentina, which has 4.2 million cases and 87,261 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, reached 17,172,628 vaccines applied, of which 13,609,451 correspond to the first dose, 29.70 % of the population, and 3,563,177 to the second dose, 7.77 %, according to official sources.
Several unions of personnel working in terminals of San Lorenzo, the main agro-exporting port area of Argentina, carried out a strike demanding that the workers be vaccinated since they were declared essential workers and, therefore, have not stopped operating during the health emergency.
Despite the stoppage, on a positive note in the country, this Friday, Richmond Laboratories announced that it finished producing the first batch of Sputnik V vaccines manufactured in the South American nation.
END OF THE YEAR PARTY
The Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, made a hopeful proposal, stating that the progress of vaccination in this Brazilian city already allows thinking about the organization of the famous Rio de Janeiro New Year’s Eve party (“Reveillon”), whose 2020 edition was canceled due to the pandemic.
According to the local president, at least half of the adult population of the city has already received the first dose, and the forecast is that the other half will be immunized by the end of August.
Brazil applied on Thursday a record 2.56 million vaccines nationwide (2.09 million with the first dose and 132,686 with the second dose), which in five months has already offered the first dose to 60.38 million people, 28.5% of its 212 million inhabitants. However, the second dose has only been applied to 24.03 million Brazilians, about 11.3% of the population.