Last Thursday, May 5, the Minister of Health, Francisco Coma, reported that the Government will acquire 500,000 Moderna vaccines through the Cóvax mechanism, and that at the end of the month one million single-dose pediatric Pfizer will arrive; However, this Friday the health portfolio rectified that for this drug to be effective there must be two doses.
According to Coma’s statements, Moderna doses will be used to complete vaccination schedules in children 6 to 11 years old who already received the first dose, while the pediatric pfizer they will be to cover more of the underage population that has not yet been immunized.
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He added that the pediatric Pfizer vaccine is a single dose, and with the amount that will be received, they could cover 70% of the target population; however, that same Friday it was confirmed that the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the opposite, because in one of its latest updates it stated that the Pfizer vaccine is safe for “over 5 years of age if the recommended doses for children from 5 to 11 are adjusted.”
The WHO says that a second dose should be given 21 to 28 days after the first. He adds that, on the other hand, for a booster dose (third dose) there are still no studies, so it is not yet recommended.
From that account that this Friday the health portfolio rectified Coma’s statements and aligned itself with the WHO recommendations, even pointing out that a booster from that pharmaceutical company was not yet recommended for children.
Loss of money for expired vaccines
Minister Coma was consulted about the complaints of some deputies who said that with the expiration of a large number of vaccines against covid-19, millions of quetzales had been lost, and he replied that “unfortunately” was a real situation.
“It is an investment that was made for the protection of Guatemalans, it was made on the basis of a projection of the population. Remember that an estimate of aapproximately more than 12 million people to be vaccinated, an estimated 24 million doses that we had to have and on that basis the previous authorities made the estimates with a technical criterion,” said Coma.
He pointed out that it was never thought that there would be a large volume of the population that did not want to be vaccinated, and that, according to the official, there still is, and it also affected that the vaccines against covid-19, unlike other biologicals, had a very short life, They were only three months old.
He pointed out that it is necessary for the population that has not been vaccinated to do so and those who have not completed their scheme as well, since the country is in a moment of the pandemic with a very low percentage of cases, the positivity rates are also low, hospitalization for covid-19 it is in 3% and that is because many people were vaccinated and also because the omicron variant was less serious for those who were immunized.
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