The COVAX program, set up by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the GAVI Vaccine Alliance to distribute covid vaccines worldwide, will send 26 million vaccines, mainly from AstraZeneca, to Latin American countries between March and May.
According to the distribution list published by GAVI today, 18 Latin American countries are present of 142 who will receive the first 237 million doses that COVAX will treat over the next three months.
Colombia, the first country in the region to receive a batch of these vaccines this Monday, will receive more than two million doses between now and May.
However, the Latin American countries that will receive the most vaccines through this program are Brazil (9.1 million) and Mexico (5.5 million).
Argentina is receiving 1.9 million doses; Peru, 1.2 million; Chile, 818,000; Ecuador, 756,000; Bolivia, 672,000; Paraguay, 304,000; and Uruguay, 148,000.
Venezuela is not on the distribution list because “the data is not very clear,” but it will have a dose, said GAVI director Seth Berkley.
In Central America, the beneficiaries of the program are Costa Rica, which will receive 218,000 doses by May, El Salvador (225,000), Guatemala (724,000), Honduras (424,000), Nicaragua (432,000) and Panama (184,000).
In the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic will have 463,000 doses, while Cuba will not receive one because it has decided not to join COVAX, Berkley explained.
The countries that will receive the most vaccines through May (more than 10 million doses each) are developing countries with a large population, such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan.
Ghana became the first country in the world to receive vaccines through this solidarity platform last week, which will today send vaccines to Cambodia, Angola, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The distribution program “will change the course of the pandemic and the way health emergencies are responded to”, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed today at a press conference, which is already considered the largest and most complex global immunization operation in history.
This year, COVAX aims to distribute at least 2 billion doses by 2021, 1.3 billion of which in poor countries.
Berkley announced at the same press conference that this initially projected figure could reach 2.5 billion doses (1.8 billion for developing countries).
190 countries are part of the platform, 100 of which contributed to the funding, while the 90 poorest economies do not have to pay for the vaccines assigned to them.
In Latin America, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua join this group.
While most of the vaccines shipped are from AstraZeneca (most manufactured by its partner, the Serum Institute of India), 1.2 million doses of the vaccine jointly developed by Pfizer / BioNTech will be distributed by May. Who also cooperate with COVAX. .
Some of these latest vaccines will go to Colombia in Latin America, which will receive 117,000 doses; El Salvador (51,000), Bolivia (92,000) and Peru (117,000).
Berkley announced that US pharmaceutical companies Johnson & Johnson, which will donate 500 million doses, and Novavax, which has signed an agreement in principle for 1.1 billion doses, will soon partner with COVAX.
The first list of beneficiaries published today does not include major manufacturers of anticovid vaccines, such as the United States, United Kingdom, China or Russia, or the countries of the European Union that have contributed financially to COVAX.
This is because most developed countries have chosen to voluntarily delay receiving doses. having contracts directly with the producers, making them one of the first to receive the vaccines.
In this way, they allow COVAX vaccines to be shipped with priority to countries that have received little or no doses.
The only rich COVAX donor countries that have asked for vaccines in this first round are Canada, New Zealand and Monaco, as well as South Korea.