With insufficient vaccine distribution and the lack of strict infection prevention measures, Latin America is far from controlling the pandemic, the Pan American Health Organization said on Wednesday, although it noted that immunization could increase in the second half of the year.
“We are still in the middle of a crisis that has not ended,” PAHO Director Carissa Etienne said in a virtual press conference. “Frankly, we still don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel,” he said after explaining that at least 40% of the deaths reported worldwide in the last week were in the Americas.
As India became the country most affected by the pandemic, it stopped the export of the vaccines it produces – with technology from the University of Oxford and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca – and they were destined for the COVAX mechanism, created by the United Nations to do more accessible global immunization.
Globally, the pandemic has killed 3.2 million people and infected more than 437 million. In the last week there are more Latin American countries than ever, exceeding 1,000 cases a day and hospitals cannot cope, PAHO said. Young people appear among the most affected in the region, unlike at the beginning of the pandemic, when they were the elderly.
If infections continue at this rate, PAHO expects that in the next three months the countries will have to increase the capacity of their intensive care rooms, which in the last year was doubled in Colombia, Panama and the Dominican Republic; tripled in Chile and Peru; and almost fivefold in Mexico and Honduras.
“Although vaccines are being distributed as quickly as possible, they are not a short-term solution. We cannot rely on vaccines to reduce infections when there are not enough, ”Etienne said. “Despite everything we have learned about the virus in a year, our efforts are not that strict, and prevention is not that efficient.”
The World Health Organization is negotiating with the Indian government to authorize one of the vaccine producers to fulfill part of the contract with COVAX, but for now the restrictions on exports remain. In the region this has affected Nicaragua, Haiti and Bolivia,
In view of this, the contract for the purchase of 500 million doses of vaccines that COVAX has just sealed with the pharmaceutical company Moderna “is excellent news,” said PAHO Deputy Director Jarbas Barbosa. These need special cooling conditions, but Barbosa said that a large part of the countries are prepared to receive them.
Of the total doses, 36 million will be distributed this year, and 460 million in 2022. Barbosa did not specify how many would be for Latin America, but said that from June the region will receive from Pfizer and from July from Johnson & Johnson.
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