A 2021 with the hope of stopping the coronavirus in Honduras and the world

Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Honduras and the world welcome a new year in which they mourn the 1.8 million deaths COVID-19 already leaves behind, but place their hopes on the promising vaccine to end the pandemic.

The country ended 2020 with more than 3,100 deaths, while the number of infections is close to 122,000 since March when it started to expand the pandemic of deadly diseases, according to official data.

For the first quarter, Honduras expects to receive the first batch of vaccines from AstraZeneca-Oxford and to begin immunizing health personnel in primary care.

LEA: The first batch of AstraZeneca vaccines is expected in Honduras in March

The Covid-19 pandemic and tropical storms Eta and Iota were the worst Honduras suffered in 2020 in the social, economic and environmental fields.

In addition to deaths and infections, the Covid-19 left more than 500,000 people out of work and paralyzed their production facilities for more than three months.

The situation worsened with tropical storms Eta and Iota, affecting thousands of families and leaving them homeless, as well as severe damage to productive infrastructure.

Estimates of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Central Bank of Honduras put the losses from the shutdown and impacts of Eta and Iota in excess of 100,000 million lempiras ($ 4,140 million) .

The damage left by Eta and Iota equals “45,676 million lempiras ($ 1,879 million),” the ECLAC report points out.

Added to the losses caused by the two natural phenomena is the crisis derived from the pandemic that, according to the BCH more than 55,000 million lempiras ($ 2,264 million).

The president of the BCH, Wilfredo Cerrato, said the losses caused represent a “historic decline of about 9% to 10%” in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). “When we add up the impact of production, we’re talking about a strong impact of 100,000 million lempiras ($ 4,143 million), and this is a very strong figure,” he explains.

Immunization

Some 50 countries have already started their vaccination campaign, just a year after the first warning from the Chinese authorities to the World Health Organization (WHO).

China was the first country to launch a vaccination campaign reserved for those most at risk (workers and students going abroad, carers, etc.).

More than five million doses of Chinese experimental vaccines have been injected into the country, that andThis Thursday one developed by Sinopharm.

Russia followed suit on December 5, when it began vaccinating high-risk workers with Sputnik V, the vaccine developed by the Russian National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology Gamaleya.

That vaccine has been approved by Belarus and Argentina, who started their vaccination campaign on Tuesday.

The United Kingdom, for its part, was the first Western country to authorize the vaccine developed by the US-German Pfizer-BioNTech alliance.

His immunization campaign began on December 8, and more than 950,000 people have already received the first of the two doses. The country was also the first to approve the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, which will be injected starting January 4. In the West they followed Canada and the United States on December 14.

Then Switzerland on the 23rd and Serbia on the 24th, almost all of the European Union on Sunday, Norway on Sunday, and Iceland on Tuesday, all with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The United States and Canada were the first two countries to approve the vaccine from the US laboratory Moderna, on which the EU will decide on January 6.

More than 2.8 million Americans have already received a dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the EU, Germany is the country that has vaccinated the most to date, with more than 130,000 doses in five days.

Keys on the AstraZeneca vaccine that will come to the country 1. Practice The AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine has the advantage of being affordable (it costs about 3 euros per dose). At the same time it is easy to store: it can be stored at a refrigerator temperature, between two and eight degrees Celsius, unlike the Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines, which can only be stored for a long time at very low temperatures (-20 ° C in the first case and -70 ° C in the second). This makes a large-scale vaccination possible. 2. Effective According to AstraZeneca’s CEO, Pascal Soriot, the vaccine is able to fight the new variant of the coronavirus, responsible for the re-outbreak of cases in the United Kingdom. “For now, we think it must be effective” against this mutation, Soriot told the Sunday Times. “But we’re not sure, so we’ll be running tests.” He also assured that new versions will be prepared just in case, but that they hope they don’t need them: “You have to be prepared.” 3. British It was produced by the British group AstraZeneca together with the University of Oxford. It is the second MHRA-approved vaccine, having been distributed in the UK by Pfizer / BioNTech since December 8 and given to more than 600,000 people. The United Kingdom, one of the countries in Europe most affected by the pandemic with more than 71,000 deaths, has ordered 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine, 40 million of which will be available by the end of March. The vaccination should start next Monday, January 4. AstraZeneca says it will be able to produce 3 billion doses of its vaccine for the entire world by 2021.