EFE | THE LAND | Bogota
The National Institute for Food and Drug Surveillance (Invima), an agency that regulates the sector in Colombia, has authorized emergency use of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine against covid-19, of which the government has already purchased 10 million doses, President said. Iván Duque.
“Today, another very relevant step has been taken to advance the covid-19 vaccination program. Today, Invima has already approved the use of the Pfizer vaccine in Colombia,” Duque said on the daily television program. “Prevention and Action”, in which he talks about the measures his government is taking to deal with the pandemic.
The president added that this process was carried out “in record time,” because “in a very short period of time, more than 22,000 pages were analyzed by the technical team” following the pharmaceutical company’s request for emergency use of its vaccine.
“This is a very important step and we will therefore continue with AstraZeneca, also with Jansen and with all the facilities within the Covax strategy,” added Duque.
On Dec. 30, the president reported that the government has entered into an agreement with the pharmaceutical company Janssen, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, to purchase nine million vaccines against Covid-19.
Twelve days earlier, he had announced the conclusion of a negotiation to acquire 10 million doses of vaccines from Pfizer and 10 million doses from AstraZeneca, as well as an agreement through the Covax platform to acquire 20 million additional doses.
Colombia, for example, has insured 49 million vaccines for the National Vaccination Plan against the corona virus, which will start in February.
According to Health Minister Fernando Ruiz, to achieve “herd immunity” is to vaccinate 70% of the approximately 49 million Colombians, that is, approximately 35.7 million people.
Colombia surpassed 1.7 million coronavirus infections this Tuesday with a record of 16,835 new cases, a figure that surpassed 16,314 infections on December 31.
According to the Ministry of Health, 1,702,966 people have contracted covid-19 in the country and currently there are 95,015 active cases, which equates to 5.55%, while 1,559,010 appear as recovered, i.e. 91.54% .
241 deaths were also reported during the day, including 219 to earlier days, bringing the number of deaths from the pandemic in Colombia to 44,426.