Iván Solano Leiva, infectologist and member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, confirmed that the government is already managing deliveries of the Pfizer medication for the first months of 2021
AstraZeneca, with which the government of El Salvador has an agreement to supply two million doses, has yet to conduct additional studies to verify the efficacy and efficacy of its vaccine against COVID-19, so it seems ‘impossible’. that we will have it in El Salvador in the first quarter of the year, ”explained infectologist Iván Solano Leiva on Wednesday in an interview with Channel 33.
The application of the AstraZeneca in the first quarter of 2021 was an announcement by the President of the Republic, Nayib Bukele, last November, although the president explained that this agreement was contingent on the company completing clinical trials on thousands of patients.
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Specialist Solano Leiva confirmed that, as a member of the Immunization Practices Advisory Committee (CAPI) working with the Department of Health, he knows that the Salvadoran government received technical approval last Wednesday to launch the Pfizer BionTech vaccine in the country, as Dr. Milton Brizuela, President of the Medical College, had told El Diario de Hoy.
The situation of slowdown AstraZeneca is going through prompted the government to negotiate with BionTech Pfizer, Solano Leiva said, adding that “this is more likely we can get it in the first quarter of 2021,” as expected by the executive branch, but with the British-Swedish medication with which he had already negotiated.
At the moment, the government has not made public the amounts involved in the purchase of any of these vaccines, only announcing that their application in the country will not incur additional costs to the population, and also each person can decide whether or not he accepts them. the injection.
The Pfizer BioNTech vaccine is already being distributed and applied in European countries, and one of the main remnants of transporting and storing it is that it has to be kept at a temperature of -70 degrees Celsius, which is why a ‘cold chain ‘necessary because it is not damaged.
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All of this is already covered in the talks between the company and the government, Solano Leiva said. “Pfizer will be responsible for all the logistics, transportation and monitoring from the cold chain, which is quite difficult with this vaccine, to storage in our country,” he explains.
The infectologist stressed that, as is happening in other countries, the vaccine would not be available to the entire population from the outset, but will give priority to primary health workers, the elderly and those who have chronic illnesses, who are more susceptible to infection ”.
The government plans to purchase two million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and that logistics includes 750,000 people who fall into this priority group, ”added Solano Leiva.
Dr. Alfonso Rosales, also an infectious disease physician and international consultant, added in the same interview that the public can have confidence in this vaccine as studies show it is quite safe.
“All vaccines have side effects, but for now both Pfizer and Moderna are behaving as expected, we should not be afraid to use them, they are equally safe,” he said, adding that studies indicate that they occur on their own. “One in a million” cases of serious consequences.