Amid a rebound in coronavirus cases, health authorities reported on Thursday, December 1 a batch of vaccines is about to expire and they justified it with the fact that the population has lost interest in being immunized.
Francisco Coma, Minister of Health, He explained that there are currently 13,000 vaccines against covid-19 in Guatemala, but that a “small batch” of these will expire in the coming days, although he assured that other drugs have yet to arrive in the country.
“The total vaccines available that are in place are about 13,000, roughly, that’s what we have, the expiration date of the largest batch is December 16th.” said the official.
He added that although a batch expiration is approaching, “With the new vaccine, assistance can be provided.”
Coma assures that Guatemala is not yet in a sixth wave of infections, but he said it is time for the population to resume the voluntary use of the mask and that the interest in getting vaccinated has been lost.
“The incidence of the need to get vaccinated has decreased a lot in recent months. we had vaccines and the population didn’t participate,” Coma said.
“We have seen that the number of cases is much lower than in the fifth wave. We are seeing that hospital occupancy continues to be very low,” the official said, who added that, despite this, they follow the behavior of the pandemic.
“We arrived with a vaccination facility where we had The vaccines should arrive in mid-December with the aim of giving continuity to the regular vaccination program,” said Coma.
The official assures that the country has not entered a sixth wave, although it does not exclude this possibility, Therefore, it recommends resuming “voluntary” prevention measures.
“We will have a rebound (in cases) probably in December and January and we are preparing for that,” said Coma, who added that health systems are staffed and supplies necessary to deal with any emergency, although he explained that the new variant behaves similarly to the previous one and for this reason they believe that there will be no increase in hospital occupancy.
Subvariants
In mid-November, the Ministry of Health confirmed the presence of the omicron sublines BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, also known as the “Hell Dog”, due to its rapid transmission.
Both subvariants correspond to the BA.5 omicron lineage. Sublineages, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) may lead to an increased risk of re-infection, but there are as yet no epidemiological data to suggest an increased severity of the disease.
The lineages are generally very similar to each other; however, there may be differences that affect the behavior of the virus.
