Jamaica, Haiti and St. Vincent and the Grenadines are among four countries due to receive more doses of COVID-19 vaccines through the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility.

The vaccines are expected to arrive in the next few weeks, as part of more than three million doses being dispatched by COVAX to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) this week for deployment to member countries that have, to date, vaccinated less than 20 percent of their populations against COVID-19.

Guatemala is the fourth country in Latin America and the Caribbean slated to get more vaccines.

PAHO Assistant Director, Dr. Jarbas Barbosa da Silva Jr., during Wednesday’s COVID-19 media briefing, said details of the latest vaccine provisions have been conveyed to the beneficiary countries to enable their preparations to receive and administer the doses, “and to make sure that [they] are able to protect their most vulnerable groups and save lives”.

He further indicated that vaccine deliveries are expected to pick up during the final months of 2021, “so we can continue to address one of the biggest challenges affecting our region – vaccine inequity”.

“COVAX has agreed that for November and December, vaccine allotments will be sent to the countries with the lowest coverage. This will ensure more protection for those countries. We are working, together with COVAX, to have these countries [prioritized],” the Assistant Director said.

According to PAHO data, nearly 44 percent of people in Latin America and the Caribbean have completed their COVID-19 immunization course.

“Thanks in large part to vaccine donations, made bilaterally or through COVAX, twice as many people in Latin America and the Caribbean are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 [now] than in August of this year,” Dr. Barbosa noted.

He pointed out that while more than half of the people in member countries remain unprotected, “our region has done a great job at accelerating immunization coverage over just a few months”.

CMC

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MEXICO CITY, Oct 30 (Reuters) – Mexico’s health ministry said it had on Saturday received nearly 6 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses against COVID-19 as pressure grows on the government to widen its vaccination roll-out to include children.

The shipment of 5,993,700 doses followed the arrival of almost 6.5 million Sputnik V vaccine doses on Tuesday, easily the two biggest vaccine consignments Mexico has received, according to data on the ministry’s website.

Mexico has fully vaccinated against COVID-19 around 56 million people, or over 43% of the population, according to Our World in Data, a research group at Oxford University.

The government has yet to undertake a broad inoculation program for children, saying only that it would vaccinate up to a million aged between 12 and 17 deemed to be at high risk.

However, media reported this week that a court had ordered health authorities to give more vaccinations to children aged 12-17 just as other countries do so.

Separately, the health ministry reported 3,478 new confirmed coronavirus cases and 325 more fatalities, bringing Mexico’s overall death toll from the pandemic to 288,276 and the total number of cases to 3,805,765.

Officials have said the ministry’s figures likely represent a significant undercount of both COVID-19 cases and deaths.

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