Uruguay will use surplus vaccines to “seal” border with Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The surplus of the first 192,000 Covid-19 vaccines that Uruguay received on February 25th will be used to “shield and seal” the land border with Brazil, as announced on Tuesday by the Minister of Public Health Daniel Salinas.

In a Twitter post, the Minister said that after closing the agenda for the next few days, the unused doses of the Chinese CoronaVac vaccine will be sent to border cities.

At present, approximately 110,000 people have already been vaccinated in Uruguay and 165,026 are scheduled, as explained on the Ministry’s website. However, more people may schedule in a few hours, hence the number of doses to be sent to the border is unclear.

On Monday, and after being immunized, Salinas explained to the press that there is “a very serious problem” in Brazil because the P.1 strain of the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus (causing covid-19) is mutating, which poses “a new challenge” for Uruguay.

“We are ‘threatened’ by the Brazilian epidemiological situation. The speed at which we vaccinate will be fundamental for the virus to stop mutating in our country. While the virus is in circulation, the virus mutates,” explained the Uruguayan Minister.

Uruguay totals 64,700 covid-19 cases to date, 8,404 of which are currently active (87 of them in intensive care units). The country records 658 deaths caused by the disease since the health emergency was declared on March 13th, 2020.

As for the 5 departments (provinces) on the border with Brazil, the most affected is Rivera, where there are 650 active covid-19 cases.

According to data from the Uruguayan Covid-19 Interdisciplinary Data Analysis Group, an average of 62.63 cases per 100,000 people have been reported in Rivera over the past seven days, leading the department to fall within the red zone of pandemic risk of the Harvard index.

Cerro Largo and Artigas registered 41.62 and 29.69, respectively, and are also in the red zone. Meanwhile, Rocha and Treinta y Tres, with averages of 13.31 and 14.14, respectively, are in the orange zone.

On Wednesday, Uruguay is to receive its first doses of the American Pfizer vaccine, which will be initially used to vaccinate health professionals.

To date, police officers, military personnel, firemen, teachers and Institute for Children and Adolescents’ (INAU) workers under 60 years of age, as well as people between 55 and 59 years old and chronic dialysis patients or on a transplant waiting list, have been immunized.