Four countries in America, with less than 1% of those vaccinated with the two doses

International Drafting, May 14 (EFE) .- Four countries in America, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay and Venezuela, have less than 1% of their population with the complete vaccination scheme against covid-19, while in Haiti there is still no has administered no immunizers.
The contrast with the United States, which has already vaccinated 154 million people with at least one dose, 46% of its population and 117 million have the complete scheme (35%) makes the inequity more devastating to reach herd immunity , which revolves around 70% of total vaccinated.
Above all, when images of people getting rid of the mask on the streets of the United States have circulated through social networks, in a week where 1.2 million people have still been infected and almost 34,000 have died in the Americas, according to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
CENTRAL AMERICA, WITH THE LARGEST LAG
Of the four countries with the least vaccinated on the continent, two, Guatemala and Honduras, are in Central America. Only 2,521 people in Guatemala have received the two doses of the vaccine, 0.01%, and 257,247 have received at least one, 1.36% of the population.
The delay in the arrival of vaccines over and over again partly explains this low percentage.
A problem that Honduras also suffers, where the dates announced on the arrival of drugs have been half met, as this Friday, when only 40,000 were received from the Russian Sputnik V, of the 80,000 that the Honduran Foreign Minister, Lisandro Rosales, announced on April 25 from Moscow.
In this country, 55,000 people have at least one inoculated dose (0.56%) and 2,639 people both (0.03%), according to April data from Our World in Data.
The exception of the isthmus is El Salvador, which in recent weeks has given a boost in its vaccination process, with 995,901 citizens, 15.35%, with at least one inoculated dose and 264,673 people, 4%, with both .
Among the other countries with low percentages of vaccination is Paraguay, with 0.22% of its population with the two doses, and Venezuela, with 0.88% of people with at least one dose. The lack of information on the vaccination rate in Nicaragua and Cuba, the latter with its own vaccines, does not allow them to be placed in the global classification.
Brazil is also concerned, which despite having a good rhythm has slowed down vaccination and has had to suspend the production of the vaccine developed by the Chinese laboratory Sinovac as of this Friday, due to a lack of raw material produced in the Asian country.
66% OF THE VACCINES IN AMERICA WENT TO THE US.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), less than 1% of the doses administered worldwide have so far reached poor countries. According to figures from the Our World in Data portal, of the total of 403.7 million vaccines administered in America, 266.6 million correspond to the United States, that is, 66%.
In fact, in South America 90.3 million people have been vaccinated with at least one dose, 22.3% of the total on the continent and a figure well below that of the United States.
With this in mind, many wealthy Latin Americans are traveling to the United States to skip the line at home.
According to the press, travel agencies throughout Latin America already manage visits for tourists to be vaccinated in the US, and there is a clear flow of Mexicans to southern destinations such as Texas, Arizona and Louisiana, which began immunization without restrictions or the registry of the migratory status of patients.
Once local demand has been overcome, the North American country opens its doors to tourists while insisting each time with sophisticated campaigns (offers in cinemas, trips and hamburgers) to attract its most skeptical citizens.
SING VICTORY?
Far from claiming victory, the lag and inequality in vaccination in America also poses a danger to countries with more income and vaccines.
The higher the level of transmission of the virus in populations, the more likely it is that viral mutations will occur and new variants that are invulnerable to immunizers will appear. “This is one of the reasons why stopping transmission is so important,” said Jairo Méndez Rico, an advisor to PAHO, at a seminar this week.

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