Panama, fourth country in the Americas in number of Covid vaccine applied

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Panama, which accumulates 381,122 cases and 6,389 deaths due to Covid-19, is proportionally the fourth country in the Americas with more doses of vaccines applied against the coronavirus, the Ministry of Health (Minsa) said Friday, citing data from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

“According to official data published by Our World in Data, Panama registers 19.1% of doses administered per 100 people, placing it as the fourth country in the Americas with the most accumulated doses, after Mexico, the United States, and Chile,” the PAHO report indicated.

With 4.28 million inhabitants, it “is also the tenth country in the world with the highest proportion of the population that has received at least one dose of the vaccine, with 15.2% up to May 27”, added the report of the continental organization.

With data on vaccination in Panama up to May 29, PAHO indicated that as of that date, 998,442 portions had been administered, “62.5% corresponding to first doses (624,247) and 37.6% to second doses (375,559)”, 94.8% of which are from Pfizer and the remaining from AstraZeneca.

Panama started the national vaccination process last January 20, and up to this Friday, 1,112,847 doses of vaccine have been applied, according to Minsa’s daily report.

According to official data, the Central American country has received 1,162,980 preparations from Pfizer, its main supplier, and 314,400 from AstraZeneca serum.

THIRD WAVE “IMMINENT”

The Minister of Health said this Friday that the “beginning of a third wave” of the pandemic is “imminent” in Panama, which in the last weeks registers a slight but sustained increase of new cases after having reached control of the disease.

Already on Thursday, Minsa announced that it would lengthen to 12 weeks the interval between the first and the second dose of the AstraZeneca preparation to accelerate the vaccination process and reach more people.

The AstraZeneca drug had been applied with a 4-week interval in Panama, where only men over 30 years of age and women over 50 years of age who have voluntarily enrolled in a registry can receive it.

Panama added this Friday 915 new cases of covid-19 and one death from the disease, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 381,122 and 6,389 deaths in more than a year of pandemic.

There are 272 coronavirus patients hospitalized on the ward and 61 in Intensive Care Units (ICU), while 6,339 remain isolated at home and 352 in hotels.

The number of patients recovered totals 367,549 since March 9, 2020, when the first case of infection occurred in Panama, which has a lethality rate of 1.7% for covid, which remains one of the lowest in Latin America.

On this day, 12,561 SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic tests were applied, which showed positivity of 7.2%. Panama has applied 2,701,741 tests, with 631,469 per million inhabitants.