Costa Rica ends mandatory Covid vaccination and will investigate purchase

The new center-right president of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves, announced last week the end of mandatory vaccination against Covid-19 and announced an investigation into the contracts signed by the previous government because, in his opinion, too large quantities of vaccine doses were purchased.

Costa Rica was one of the few countries that tried mandatory vaccination, along with Austria & Germany. The old socialist government forced even young healthy people to become loyal consumers of Big-Pharma.

“We will investigate why they bought so many vaccines when they said the market was saturated,” Chaves said at his weekly press conference after the Council of Government meeting.

The president said that “they bought millions of dollars worth of vaccines at a time when vaccination rates were dropping” and regretted that “now we have wasted, I don’t know how much money probably on vaccines that will not be used and will expire.”

“If we disclose details about the contract, we could end up in jail because we would be violating a contract that was drawn up by the daughter of former President Luis Guillermo Solís (2014-2018), a very good lawyer because she represented Pfizer, and this is not a bubble. It is sealed,” Chaves said.

According to the president, the government’s confidentiality is obligated to maintain in the contract “can give the impression that such an absolute level of secrecy obscures the need to keep things in the dark.”

The previous government of Carlos Alvarado (2018-2022) signed contracts with pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and AstraZeneca to purchase Covid-19 vaccines.

AstraZeneca completed the deliveries, but in the case of Pfizer, the Alvarado government announced on April 7, a month before the end of its mandate, a “restructuring” of the strategy for obtaining vaccines, as there were enough doses for the first half of 2022.

The decision suspended pending deliveries of vaccines under the Pfizer contract until further notice.

Up to that point, Costa Rica had received 7.4 million doses from Pfizer, with which it had signed two contracts: the first for 6 million doses and the second for 3.5 million doses.

Health Minister Joselyn Chacón said Wednesday she would soon release data on how many vaccines have been administered, how many are available, and how many have yet to be delivered.

Both President Chaves and Minister Chacón announced Thursday the immediate end of mandatory vaccination against Covid-19.

The minister explained that two members of the National Commission on Vaccination, the technical body that ordered mandatory vaccination for 2021, have ended their terms, and therefore, everything that has been done since 2020 is null and void.

According to Chacón, the commission’s intention was “to force people to get vaccinated to give out the vaccines,” which she initially refused to believe, but now “I see it differently.”

“I am in favor of vaccinations, I believe they save lives, and I will continue to promote them, but not force them,” she said.

Chaves had promised to eliminate mandatory anti-viral vaccination when he took office on May 8.