The first vaccines El Salvador will receive are those from AstraZeneca. The government assured that it will begin vaccinating frontline workers on Wednesday.
President Nayib Bukele announced on Tuesday evening that the first batch of AstraZeneca vaccines will arrive in El Salvador on Wednesday, February 17, and health personnel will be the first to be vaccinated.
The vaccines that El Salvador will receive will be those from the Astrazeneca party that the government has acquired, not those the country is expected to receive through the World Health Organization (WHO) COVAX mechanism. According to the president, that donation will come in the first week of March.
“Tomorrow morning, a @ Iberia plane will bring the first batch of # COVID19 vaccines from @AstraZeneca from India. The vaccination will start tomorrow with our frontline staff. That will take a few days and thousands of health workers are vaccinated daily, ”Bukele wrote on his Twitter account.
SEE: El Salvador is one of the first countries to receive the COVID-19 vaccine through the COVAX mechanism, what does this mean?
Health Minister Francisco Alabí will hold a conference at the international airport on Wednesday at 10:00 AM to report on the first batch of vaccines to be received.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the government had not yet given an exact date to receive the first vaccines or to begin the vaccination plan. However, they began to put up signs to identify the vaccination centers, as is the case at the National Hospital of San Francisco Gotera, Morazán.
Staff at San Juan de Dios Hospital, in San Miguel, El Diario de Hoy unofficially explained that Minister Alabí is expected to visit the site on Wednesday to supervise the sector where the vaccines will be applied at the said medical center. in the outpatient clinic, where the midwifery center used to operate.
The Ministry of Health has not yet announced the vaccination plan to be implemented in the coming days, nor has it specified the places where the first stage of immunization will begin.
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As for the government in the first days of January ands construction of 156 booths or modules for vaccination, at a cost of $ 5 million according to data from the Minister of Health.
Each booth will cost an estimated $ 32,000, the minister said, labeled “waste” and “unnecessary expense” by public health experts and deputies.
The Astrazeneca vaccine given to El Salvador requires the normal temperature of a refrigerator.
The announcement of the arrival of the vaccines is made two weeks before the municipal and parliamentary elections, and amid constant requests from various sectors to the government to inform the logistics that will be implemented.