Covid-19: Bolivia surpasses 3 million second doses applied

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Bolivia reported on Tuesday, September 14, 340 new cases and 8 deaths due to Covid-19 in a day in which the immunization process exceeded 3 million second doses applied since its beginning at the end of January.

The departments with the highest number of new infections were Santa Cruz with 109 and La Paz with 75, while the other seven regions presented cases ranging between 16 and 38.

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According to a bulletin issued by the Ministry of Health, the country has been in de-escalation for thirteen weeks, after the third peak of infections between early May and mid-July, with 3,000 cases and more than a hundred deaths.

With the records of this day, Bolivia has accumulated 18,603 deaths and 495,612 confirmed infections since the beginning of the pandemic in March last year, of which 29,201 cases remain active.

The vaccination process has achieved the application of 3,322,502 first doses and 3,001,093 second doses of immunizers such as Sinopharm and Sputnik V, acquired by the government, together with those of the AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Janssen type which arrived through the Covax mechanism of the United Nations.

The Bolivian government has specified that 81% of the 12,459,650 vaccines that arrived in the country were acquired through bilateral purchases, while the remaining 19%, some 2,382,350, are donations.

Bolivian authorities have estimated that 7.2 million people over 18 years of age make up the universe of the vaccine-eligible population.

The central government has insisted that governors’ and mayors’ offices change their strategies so that several million available doses are applied to the unvaccinated population and opt for organizing medical brigades to work in remote areas.

National authorities have maintained the request for biosecurity measures to be maintained in the face of a potential fourth peak of infections that could affect mainly those who have not been vaccinated.

One of the most critical cases continues to be the city of El Alto, the second most populous in the country with one million inhabitants, where vaccination has reached 40%, something that is due to anti-vaccine groups that “are distorting” the information, assured the mayor of that city, Eva Copa.