The United States will send more than 305,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine to Nicaragua, in the country’s first donation to the government of Daniel Ortega, to support the immunization campaign against COVID-19, diplomatic sources in Managua reported on Wednesday.
Laura Santini, a spokeswoman for the US embassy, told The Associated Press that the doses will arrive in the country next Friday as a donation as part of the Covax mechanism, a global fund led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other agencies. international
The Nicaraguan government has not yet confirmed the donation, the first one sent by the Joe Biden government to the Central American country.
Ortega, who is betting on being reelected in the elections on November 7 after having imprisoned his main political rivals, often harshly criticizes the United States, which he accuses of having promoted “a failed coup” through a social revolt which erupted in April 2018 and was suffocated by police and paramilitaries.
The White House, in turn, signals the government of the veteran former Sandinista commander of committing acts of corruption and human rights violations, for which the Treasury Department has sanctioned some thirty of his officials and close family members.
The European Union, for its part, recently extended the sanctions to 14 senior Sandinista officials for a year and has demanded that Ortega hold “free and transparent elections” and allow the country to return to the democratic channel.
The Nicaraguan Ministry of Health began vaccination against COVID-19 in April and in recent weeks has applied Pfizer’s immunizer to pregnant and lactating women following a donation from Honduras.
It has also applied vaccines from the AstraZeneca-Covishield laboratories, manufactured in India, the Russian Sputnik V and this week began vaccinating young people and children with Sputnik Light (single-dose) and the Cuban Soberana 2 and Abdala, the latter not authorized by the WHO. Cuba announced the shipment of seven million doses to Nicaragua.
The United States has already distributed 200 million COVID-19 vaccines free of charge to more than 100 countries and territories, becoming the world’s largest donor.
“These 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have helped bring health and hope to millions of people, but our work is far from over,” Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power said in a statement released last week.
So far in Nicaragua there have been more than 16,400 cases of coronavirus and 207 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Science and Engineering in System.
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