The President of the Republic, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, announced this Saturday the purchase of one million more doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19 for the year 2022.
Alvarado made the announcement during his visit to the extramural vaccination center of the Heredia Virilla Health Area in the Paseo de las Flores Mall. This purchase is in addition to the 2.5 million doses that had already been announced for next year, in order to immunize 1.5 million boys and girls from 5 to 12 years of age; and 2 million doses to give booster doses to the same number of people.
The purchase was approved by the National Commission for Vaccination and Epidemiology (CNVE), chaired by the Minister of Health, Daniel Salas Pereza.
To date, Costa Rica has agreed to 6,001,125 doses of vaccine with Pfizer, of which 4,425,135 doses have already been delivered (73.73%). With the additional purchase scheduled, the country will have purchased 9,501,125 doses with Pfizer.
So far, the profile of the population that will receive a third booster dose against COVID-19 corresponds to: immunosuppressed population, over 58 years of age and first responders.
However, with the purchase of one million more doses it is expected that more vulnerable groups will be included in the list to receive booster, especially after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA, for its acronym in English) approved the third dose of Pfizer for all people over 65; and for those between 18 and 64 years old at high risk of suffering from COVID-19 in a “serious” way, as well as those in the same age range whose frequent institutional or occupational exposure to the coronavirus puts them at “high risk of complications serious “in case of suffering the disease.
In the United States, the third dose was scheduled to be administered six months after completing the two-dose schedule. The term Costa Rica will take has not yet been announced.
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