Mexico City, May 20, (dpa/GNA) – There are glaring gaps in access to Covid-19 vaccines throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, the director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), said Wednesday.
“Just three percent of Latin Americans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19,” the head of the regional health organization, Carissa Etienne, said in her weekly briefing.
“And we still have a long way to go to ensure that everyone is protected,” she added.
She noted the region’s overdependence on imports for essential medical supplies. “Less than 4 [per cent] of medical products in use during the COVID response have come from the region.”
“Thanks to export bans, supply chain delays and lack of purchasing power, our region has struggled to compete for access to personal protective equipment, oxygen supplies, medicines and vaccines which are all vital to the COVID response,” Etienne asserted.
Expanding regional capacity to manufacture strategic medical supplies and especially vaccines “is a must, both for our people and as a matter of health security,” she added.
In Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, vaccines such as those from Astrazeneca and CanSino are already being manufactured or packaged on a limited scale. In Cuba, two domestic vaccines are currently the final phase of clinical trials.
After months of delays – because products that were needed for the final coating and filling in Mexico were missing – the first million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine produced in Argentina and Mexico should be ready next week, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Wednesday.
Argentina and Mexico said last August that they would jointly produce at least 150 million doses of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford and thus supply Latin America apart from Brazil.
GNA