Bolivia cancels AstraZeneca vaccine purchase contract due to non-compliance

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Bolivia canceled the contract for the purchase of AstraZeneca vaccines due to the non-compliance of the Serum Institute, informed this Monday the Bolivian Vice-Minister of Foreign Trade and Integration, Benjamín Blanco.

The laboratory “has not been able to deliver due to an issue that they allege is due to force majeure, which is that the Government of India has prohibited them from exporting, so it is no longer appropriate to do anything with this contract, simply the breach has occurred on their part”, explained Blanco in a meeting with the press.

The vice-minister clarified that Bolivia still has a quota of five million vaccines against covid-19, and “it is not discarded that they will be needed next year, we have no reason to renounce to that quota”.

In mid-January, the government signed a contract to provide five million vaccines developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca. In March, the country received 228,000 doses through the United Nations Covax mechanism; it was the first batch of three to be supplemented in April.

For his part, the National Head of the Expanded Program of Immunization (EPI), Max Enriquez, said that “thanks to the donation of 150,000 vaccines from the Government of Mexico,” the second doses from AstraZeneca could be covered and that in the next few days more of these drugs will also be received, so there will be “no difficulties”.

Blanco was emphatic in saying that as soon as it was known that the deadlines for the arrival of the AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccines were not going to be met, the Government “immediately knocked on all the doors” to “guarantee” the vaccination, which is why the acquisition of the doses from the Chinese Sinopharm was achieved.

In this sense, the Vice Minister confirmed that Bolivia would receive from this Friday 525,000 Sputnik V vaccines, the first of four lots to complete 1,225,000 doses.

He also said that another batch with “200,000-second doses” is expected to arrive “before July 19” and that for August, “400,000-second doses” and “in September another 100,000-second doses” are expected to be received.

In addition, the Bolivian Government has also made arrangements for one million Johnson & Johnson vaccines to arrive in the country.

Since vaccination began at the end of January, 2,762,994 people have already been vaccinated between the first and second doses with Sputnik V, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, and Pfizer vaccines.

Bolivia reported Sunday 878 new infections and 31 deaths, indicating the de-escalation of the third wave that began in early May and raised the accumulated number of cases in the country to 444,968 and deaths to 16,951.