Covid-19: Sixty-six percent of Panama’s population has received one dose of vaccine

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Sixty-six percent of Panama’s population has received the first dose of the Covid 19 vaccine. This places the country fifth in Latin America with the highest percentage of people vaccinated against the disease, the Ministry of Health (Minsa) announced Monday.

Citing data from the online publication Our World in Data, the Minsa said Panama, a country of 4.28 million people, ranks behind Uruguay (first place), Chile, Brazil, and Cuba in this list.

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From Jan. 20 through Monday, 5,350,317 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine were administered in Panama: 4,605,843 servings from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and 744,474 from AstraZeneca, according to the report from the Expanded Program for Immunization (EPI).

The Central American country has vaccinated 50% of the target population with the two doses, Minsa chief Luis Francisco Sucre said last week. This, he said, is “a significant advance in the PanavaC-19 operation, to achieve population immunity by the end of 2021.

With the progress in vaccination and the decrease in cases, as well as the reduction of deaths and patients in intensive care units, measures to combat the pandemic have been relaxed or lifted, such as the night curfew in several parts of the country and the capacity allowed in churches, parishes, places of worship, chapels and temples.

As of Monday, 80% of people with complete vaccination schedules and 50% of the general population are allowed to gather in these communities, according to the country’s health authorities.

Panama recorded 152 new Covid 19 cases Monday, the lowest number in recent weeks, and four deaths, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 464,440 and 7,176 deaths in the more than 18 months of the pandemic.

According to the Minsa report, 68 patients with the coronavirus are in intensive care and 225 in hospital wards. At the same time, 3,501 are isolated in their homes and 164 in hotels for 3,958 active cases. On that day, 3,536 tests were performed to detect covid cases, with positivity of 4.2%. The number of tests per million population is 889,678.