34.4% of the vaccines purchased against covid have not been applied

Bolivia has 8,176,401 coronavirus vaccines available. This lot means 34.4% of the doses purchased by the Government and those it has received from cooperation. There is low application in the fourth dose of the vaccine and the Ministry of Health asks the population to go to immunization centres. It is not known whether these more than 8 million immunizers are about to expire.

According to the report of the Ministry of Health dated January 5, up to that date, 15,639,099 vaccinations in the entire population between the first, second, third dose unit and fourth dose. The applied vaccines are distributed in Sputnik V, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Pfizer and Janssen throughout the national territory.

The government bought and received a total of 23,815,500 vaccines as cooperation from different laboratories. Of that figure, 65.6% was applied to the population at different stages.

The first dose was applied to 6,444,407 people, the second dose to 5,251,678 beneficiaries, the third dose to 2,374,378 people and the fourth to 569,968 citizens. The single dose was injected into 998,668 people across the country.

“Despite being the last country that has agreed to the possibility of vaccines, we are one of the few that can guarantee all its doses and up to a fourth and third booster dose,” said Health Minister Jeyson Auza.

Bolivia is about to complete two years of vaccination against Covid-19. Vaccination with the first dose in Bolivia has reached 68.8% and with the second 57.7% at the end of 2022.

Minister Auza acknowledged that the age group that should strengthen their attendance at health centers for immunization is between five and 17 years old.

“If we talk about the percentage of vaccination that has been achieved at a national level, taking into account all age groups, i.e. all population older than five years, 68.8% were reached in the first dose”, informed the authority.

Immunization against covid-19 in Bolivia began in late January 2021 with frontline healthcare personnel and mass inoculation began on February 25 of the same year for people over the age of 18 for a vaccinable population of 7.1 million people and then it was expanded to 10.2 million over the age of five.

The government declared December 5 as the start of the sixth wave of the pandemic of the novel coronavirus, as a result of the sustained four-week increase in infections dominated by the omicron subvariants BQ.1 and BQ 1.1.

Regarding the batch of vaccines awaiting application, the president of the Bolivian Medical College, Luis Larrea, regretted that the The government has no strategy to reach the age groups that do not attend vaccination centres. The doctor refers to children and adolescents and said plans need to add fathers and mothers of families.

“There is no vaccination strategy, but the most tragic thing is that we are the country that accumulates vaccines, we are the country that does nothing to carry out a real vaccination strategy,” Larrea wondered.

The doctor asked for biosecurity measures to be maintained and recalled that last year he had suggested to the Government to start a new vaccination cycle for those people who had received full doses of the anticovid vaccine.

“We must continue with biosecurity measures, cases have increased, the vaccine does not end the virus. After the third and fourth dose, a new vaccination cycle must be started ”, she remarked.

There is no official data on how many doses have been discarded in Bolivia for its expiration. In March 2022, the director of the Expanded Immunization Program (PAI), Max Enríquez, reported that an estimated 800,000 to 1 million doses of the anti-Covid vaccine had been discarded.

“What we have is an established loss factor for the country of 10%, we would be within this parameter, we are 50% more or less, we are collecting data because it has been distributed to all establishments where there are more than 3,000 vaccinations,” said Enríquez.

According to Enríquez, the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm is valid for at least two years, while the rest can last from eight months to a year.

The Ministry of Health has issued a 2022 management instruction which refers to the obligation for the Departmental Health Services, the Expanded Immunization Programs and the municipal administrations to send expired vaccines to the Government headquarters, including those of covid 19, with a relationship that contain vaccine balances they have in stock, expiration date and batch number according to the logistics area.

AstraZeneca’s pharmaceutical vaccines expired on October 31, 2022. According to Minister Auza, these doses have arrived in the country through cooperation and he has ensured that they have not been applied due to the risks they entail.

“It is above all about the vaccines that we have received as a donation, they do not have a long history like the ones we have acquired, we will not administer expired vaccines,” said Auza.

In La Paz, that region’s headquarters also confirmed that in the 2022 administration a batch of Moderna vaccines has expired and they have been returned to the Ministry of Health, according to an instruction.

“The loss factor does not mean that there were no people to vaccinate. On the contrary, it means that there weren’t all the people to be vaccinated,” said Sedes La Paz director, Mayber Aparicio.

The official explained that the the vaccine is available in vials of five and up to six doses and that a vial is opened to immunize a person, forcing the contents to lose their value.

There are several vaccination points in the country. According to the authorities of the Ministry of Health, the age group between five and 17 years is the one that has applied the minimum dose in Bolivia.