Paraguay’s President obtains a “commitment of solidarity” from foreign diplomatic corps

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The President of Paraguay, Mario Abdo Benítez, on Tuesday, May 25, defended his management during the pandemic and presented his plans for economic recovery to the diplomatic representatives accredited in Asunción, from whom he obtained a “commitment of solidarity”, said the Chancellor, Euclides Acevedo, at the end of the event.

The meeting arose at the initiative of the Apostolic Nunciature, dean of the diplomatic corps in Paraguay, who hosted the meeting in the form of lunch at embassy headquarters.

For more than three hours, Abdo Benítez shared with the ambassadors the actions of his government to confront the pandemic, based on “a commitment to solidarity rather than assistance”, and also submitted to questions and queries of the diplomats.

After the event, the President left the Nunciature headquarters without making any statements and delegated the Foreign Minister to report on the conclusions of the meeting to which the diplomatic corps summoned him.

“It has been a profitable, cordial, hopeful conversation of the highest responsibility and commitment with the regional and continental future,” Acevedo told the media.

The pandemic was the “unavoidable topic” of the meeting. The president took the opportunity to emphasize Paraguay’s claims to the World Health Organization regarding the functioning of the Covax mechanism for the purchase of vaccines.

Paraguay continues to find it difficult to obtain vaccines on the international markets in the middle of the race for protection against the coronavirus amid a wave of contagions.

Between February and May, it has only received 707,400 doses, when it needs to immunize 4.7 million of its target population.

Although the coronavirus was the central issue of this meeting and the lack of vaccines is a problem in the country, the chancellor dealt with questions about the purchase or donation of new doses by the countries present.

Acevedo alluded to the “commitment of an international cooperation” post-pandemic, with the economic reactivation and recovery of productive systems.

“Fundamentally, technological cooperation in the field of health. In the field of economic relations, the importance of regionalization. We all come out of the pandemic together, or no one comes out at all,” he explained.

The Executive and the diplomatic corps also discussed the prevention of future pandemics, which will require vaccines, and the modernization of the Paraguayan hospital system.

With a little more than 7 million inhabitants, Paraguay has registered 335,691 infections since the beginning of the pandemic, with 8,474 deaths and 277,128 classified as recovered.