Asuncion, 29 Dec. Paraguay, which is facing its fifth wave of the covid-19 pandemic, tries to boost the number of people with the third and fourth doses of the anti-vid vaccine, as cases rise in China, the director of the Program of expanded immunization (PAI), Héctor Castro.
Furthermore, it would become one of the first countries in the region, after Chile, to administer the bivalent vaccine, developed by the pharmaceutical company Moderna, to its population starting in January.
“We are attentive to what is happening in China, due to all that this pandemic has brought as a globalized world,” said Castro, for whom “there are characteristics” of the Asian giant that can be “transferred” to the Paraguayan reality.
Specifically, the expert acknowledged that, as in China, in Paraguay “the coverage of reinforcements was very low”.
According to data from the Ministry of Public Health and Social Security, 20% (1,643,164 people) of the total population targeted for covid immunization in the country (between 5 and 80 years old and above) received the third dose and 5% (343,848 people) the fourth question or the second reinforcement.
Statistics reveal that 53% (3,543,866 people) of the target population for vaccination have both doses of the anticovid vaccine and 59% (4,005,686) with the first.
In this regard, Castro explained that the country’s adult population “does not consider vaccination an important element in health care”.
“We are working on vaccination of adults, so that it is incorporated into practice, into health care, not necessarily when there is an increase in infections, but much earlier,” he said.
The strategy for 2023 also provides for the application of the new composition of the Moderna vaccine.
“Chile is in fact the first country that has launched this (bivalent) vaccination, we too want to place ourselves, not for a question of innovation, but above all to give our population the availability of this composition,” he said.
The country will try to strengthen immunization in the face of the rebound in cases, especially reinfections, which between December 11 and 17 accounted for 57% of the 4,381 positives registered.
Paraguay already has 785,534 infected and 19,666 dead since it reported the first case of the virus, in March 2020. EFE
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