The Minister of Health, Carlos Mellado, assured that Puerto Rico is one of the jurisdictions in the United States that delivers vaccines more efficiently COVID-19, claiming that more than 80% of the doses received have already been distributed. This is despite the fact that it was confirmed yesterday that about 200 vaccines have been lost.
According to information provided by the official, 221,426 of the 270,050 vaccines received have been distributed to vaccination centers on the island. Until yesterday, the administration of 136,682 vaccines had been recorded, a higher figure than that reported by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), indicating that in Puerto Rico only 104,137 of the 311,325 that were “distributed” were used.
“I had conversations with HHS (Federal Ministry of Health) and the people at the CDC and they find that Puerto Rico is one of the first places, areas where vaccines are not stored. What we have in storage is what arrived on Thursday for the second dose of the first phase. If you want the fridges from the National Guard There are no vaccines, ”Mellado said at a news conference yesterday.
Relying on the CDC’s data and the data provided individually by the territories, a compilation of the Bloomberg media places Puerto Rico as the jurisdiction with the 10th lowest percentage of vaccines administered, only above states like North Carolina, Hawaii and Alabama , as well as the territories of the Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Palau, the Virgin Islands, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. In compiling the US media, the data corresponding to Puerto Rico is the same as that on the CDC website.
Right now it is Health Department there is no ‘dashboard’ describing the development of the vaccination process.
According to Bloomberg, North Dakota is the state that has delivered its vaccines most efficiently, with 77.1% of the vaccines assigned to it. In the case of Puerto Rico, this is 50.6%, based on the figures provided by Mellado.
Mellado noted that the nearly 50,000 vaccines that have not been distributed in Puerto Rico are mainly assigned to the second dose of people who received the first in late December.
In recent weeks, both Mellado and Jose Reyes, chief of the National Guard, have stressed that the CDC is delaying reporting data. Likewise, Mellado claimed that the amount of vaccines the CDC reports as “distributed” for each jurisdiction includes doses that have not yet arrived.
The health minister stressed that the possibility of Puerto Rico achieving so-called herd immunity – which requires vaccinating at least 70% of the population – in the coming summer will depend on the number of weekly doses the CDC allocates. In this sense, he alluded to the president-elect’s promise, Joe Biden, to drastically liberalize the flow of vaccines, so it is expected that by early February the number of weekly vaccines will be significantly higher than the roughly 40,000 reaching today. Of those 40,000, 11,000 are destined for the Walgreens and CVS pharmacy chains, which are responsible for vaccinating older adults in long-term care centers.
The former state epidemiologist Angeles RodriguezHowever, it was concerned about the risks that the Biden administration’s flexibility plan could pose, particularly in relation to the possibility that there is not enough supply to administer the second dose that each person immunized with the vaccine may have. need. Pfizer or Moderna.
“It’s nonsense to me. I want to think that someone sensible will recommend in time not to do that. Scientific evidence from these two vaccines shows that their success in protecting 94% or 95% of vaccinated people depends on the ‘booster’ (second dose). If we don’t give that second ‘booster’, we lose the first. After a certain time, the person does not have adequate protection. It is an initiative that will not succeed. I hope (the new federal administration) doesn’t, and if they do, since vaccination depends on the states, Puerto Rico isn’t doing it, “the infectologist said.
The second dose of the Pfizer vaccine must be administered within 21 days of the first, while in the case of Moderna, the interval is 28 days.
Complicated return to face-to-face classes
Rodríguez also called for a “ reconsideration ” of efforts to gradually reopen schools from March onwards, as stated by the governor. Pedro Pierluisi.
“Probably all decisions based on achieving safety, in quotes, in order to avoid contamination in the classroom, I think they should be reconsidered. We are in a time that is likely to be critical. There is a species circulating that is extremely aggressive in terms of transmission. If we don’t want to collapse the health system, we have to be very judicious in strictly following the recommendations to avoid transmission, ”said Rodríguez, who believed that the government had done enough work in the initial vaccination phase.
According to Mellado, the vaccination process for teaching and non-teaching staff in public and private schools, which began this week, will take between “six to eight weeks,” meaning it would end between early and mid-March.
“The process of teachers and non-teachers, who are 55,000, between public and private, I don’t understand (it would be slowed down by the slow flow of vaccines). The detail will be how many people, how many workers, want to have access to the vaccine. The plan for opening classes depends on many factors. What we have always wanted to achieve is a specific goal. If we don’t have something as a goal, we will never be able to do it, and (the return to schools) depends of many factors and how we are facing the Covid at the time, ”said Mellado.
On the other hand, Mellado denied that the loss of 200 doses of Moderna at a vaccination center is part of a pattern in the administration of the vaccine in Puerto Rico. The secretary declined to state in which vaccination center the incident took place, except that it is a place that “is doing very well”. Mellado was not available to answer Metro’s questions, despite early morning efforts.
“What happened was that the person who received the vaccine box saw that there was melted ice. What he did was put the box in the fridge. When the CDC was consulted, the recommendation was not to use the vaccine. I have to make it clear that this is the only incident Puerto Rico has. There was one state that lost up to 2500 doses, ”Mellado said at a conference of the interior minister in Fortaleza.
“These are things that can and have happened. Handling this vaccine is extremely complicated. Even if the second dose comes, it has to be treated in a different way, ”he added.