Faced with the delay in the shipment of the Sputnik V vaccine to Bolivia, of which Russia has sent 750,000 doses out of a contracted total of 5.2 million, the Eurasian country sent two million pills of its antiviral Avifavir to treat COVID-19 .
“Avifavir is effective in preventing moderate cases from getting worse. It is an expensive drug. The two million pills guarantee 50,000 treatments that have cost 10.8 million dollars and will be distributed free of charge, ”said Vice Minister of Foreign Trade, Benjamin Blanco, on state television.
Widely used in intermediate therapy, Avifavir’s price soared on the black market to seven times its value. The authorities carry out raids to prevent its illegal sale through social networks.
Until June, at least three million doses of Sputnik V should have arrived, according to the contract signed in December. Authorities did not provide the reasons for the supplier’s delay. Another 100,000 units of the first dose arrived over the weekend. The Ministry of Health had to extend the application of the second dose of this vaccine to three months.
In turn, the COVAX mechanism compromised almost a million vaccines and has sent 421,050 doses. “It has not been able to fulfill its deliveries either because India suspended its exports of vaccines and medicines,” acknowledged Blanco. The second dose of the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines is pending delivery. 150,000 AstraZeneca units donated by Mexico arrived on Sunday.
As of Monday, Bolivia received 2.7 million doses of vaccines and is scheduled to vaccinate 7.1 million people. The Chinese Sinopharm is the most used because the supply is more fluid, according to the authorities. With the first dose, 22% of the population was vaccinated while the complete vaccination only covers 7%, according to the Ministry of Health.
The slow vaccination has drawn criticism from leftist president Luis Arce. “The Covax mechanism informed us that it has no possibility of supplying us and we are appealing to all our diplomatic relations to obtain the donation, the loan or the purchase” of AstraZeneca, said Blanco.
So far, Bolivia has registered almost 407,000 cases of the new coronavirus and more than 15,500 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Science and Systems Engineering.
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