Paraguay lacks sufficient vaccines to apply first doses

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The director of Paraguay’s Expanded Program of Immunization (EPI), Héctor Castro, reminded this Friday that during the next few weeks the application of second doses will continue, since the country still does not have sufficient supplies to vaccinate new age groups or people who are lagging behind.

“We are having a weekly supply that does not exceed 30,000 (vaccines). Therefore, it is a quantity that does not yet allow us to reactivate the first dose,” Castro explained at the Ministry of Health’s weekly press conference.

For this reason, all the vaccines that the country is receiving are being used to complete the schedule of people who have already received the first dose.

Castro estimated that by the last week of August it will be possible to reactivate the vaccination with first doses, since by then it is expected to have received “a good amount of Covaxin”.

The health authorities also hope that Pfizer will increase the number of doses it sends weekly, although the matter is still under discussion with the laboratory.

After receiving 20,000 doses of component two of Sputnik V this Thursday, Castro confirmed that it will be applied as of August 18, although more precise information will be provided in the coming days.

He also commented that they are evaluating what to do with the almost 20,000 doses donated by Colombia, since they would only cover about 10,000 people. The ministry aims to allocate them to a “focused strategy”, with people deprived of liberty and people in residences.

MORE THAN 1 MILLION PEOPLE WITH TWO DOSES

Castro updated at the press conference the data shared a few hours earlier by the Minister of Health, Julio Borba, on the number of people with the complete vaccination schedule.

Borba spoke, from an inauguration in the Paraguayan Chaco, of one million people with the two doses, according to Thursday’s closing data.

Castro specified that, as of 7 AM this Friday, the precise figure was 1.06 million people with the full schedule, while 2.3 million have already received one dose.

Paraguay’s initial target is to vaccinate an estimated population of 4.5 million people, Castro said Friday, so these figures mean that almost 50% have already received a dose.

For his part, the director of Health Surveillance, Guillermo Sequera, commented at the same press conference that so far this year the population’s perception of the vaccine has changed and fewer and fewer people do not want to be vaccinated.

Currently, 19.2 % of the population does not want to be vaccinated, compared to 40 % who gave the same answer in December, according to data presented by Sequera, compiled by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

“The desire to be vaccinated and not to be vaccinated is dynamic. (…) The desire to get vaccinated is also contagious when we see that people are getting vaccinated and nothing happens,” he added.

The director of Health Surveillance urged citizens who are still hesitating to get vaccinated and reminded that “there is a significant decrease in cases” thanks to the vaccines.

Paraguay has accumulated a total of 15,383 deaths and 456,291 infections since March 2020, when the first case was detected in the country.