Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica are the first countries in Latin America to start vaccinating their numbers against COVID-19, with frontline health workers and nursing home residents receiving the first shots.
Mexico, which has one of the highest COVID-19 death tolls in the world, launched its massive vaccination program at a hospital in the capital, Mexico City, in a televised event Thursday.
“It’s the best gift I could get in 2020,” said 59-year-old Mexican nurse Maria Irene Ramirez when she received the injection.
“It makes me safer and gives me more confidence to continue the war against an invisible enemy. We are afraid but we must continue. “
The announcement came a day after the first 3,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine arrived by a courier plane from Belgium.
Medical workers were first-line as vaccines began in Mexico City, the capital and center of the conventional wave of diseases. More people are now in the country in hospital for COVID-19 than it saw at the height of the first wave of pandemic in late July.
Medical staff wait to receive the first of two injections with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine at Mexico City General Hospital [Edgard Garrido/Reuters]
The Department of Health says 18,301 people in hospitals across Mexico are being treated for the disease that may be caused by the coronavirus. That’s 0.4 percent more than it was in July. In Mexico City, some 85 percent of hospital beds are occupied.
The state of Morelos, just south of the capital, became the fourth of the 32 states in Mexico to issue a “red” warning, which will lead to some lockdown and closure of unnecessary businesses starting Thursday.
Mexico has recorded more than 1.3 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 120,000 deaths linked to the disease, the fourth highest death toll in the world, according to a report from Johns Hopkins University.
‘Many feelings’
In Chile, the first country in South America to deliver COVID-19 shots, 46-year-old nurse assistant Zulema Riquelme was the first person shown to receive the injection, sometimes after the first 10,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived on a plane.
“I am very happy and nervous – a lot of emotions,” she said after being greeted in the presence of President Sebastian Pinera in the capital.
“You hope everyone,” Pinera told her.
Zulema Riquelme will receive the first of two injections of Pfizer / BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, at a hospital in Santiago [Chile’s presidency handout via AFP]
Meanwhile, Argentina received an initial batch of about 300,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday.
The vaccine reached Ezeiza International Airport, in the suburban area of Buenos Aires, on a special flight of Moscow-based carrier Aerolineas Argentinas, according to Reuters news agency witnesses and images shown on local television.
Officials in Argentina, the third country to approve the Sputnik vaccine after Russia and Belarus, have said they plan to start giving the vaccine in the coming days.
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera watches as workers carry the first batch of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at Santiago airport [Ivan Alvarado/Reuters]
Meanwhile, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said the country has received 30 million coronavirus vaccines from three suppliers, enough to protect 15 million people – more than two-thirds of the population – in the first half of 2021.
The doses arrived at Santiago airport from the manufacturing hub of Pfizer, the Belgian city of Puurs, just before 7am local time (10:00 GMT) on Christmas Eve, according to a statement from the presidency.
The doses were transported by police helicopter to a logistics center in the capital Santiago, with vaccinations expected to begin later in the morning.
A health care worker in personal protective equipment (PPE) takes a swab from a woman for a rapid COVID-19 test during the COVID-19 revolution in Vina del Mar, Chile [Rodrigo Garrido/Reuters]
Chile is among the countries in Latin America that have struck the most bilateral contracts with pharmaceutical companies, including contracts with AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Sinovac as well as the global COVAX vaccine distribution scheme.
Costa Rica also received the first shipment of Pfizer doses on Wednesday, and the country delivered its first sighting on Thursday to 91-year-old, wheelchair-bound nursing home resident Elizabeth Castillo.
“I’m very thankful to God, because I asked for so much of it. My life is very important to me, so take advantage of it every minute,” Castillo said.
Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada said at a news conference earlier in the day that vaccines may be “the beginning of the end of this pandemic”.
Quesada was at Juan Santamaria Airport in the capital San Jose to welcome a flight delivering the first 9,750 doses of the vaccine, which arrived at 9pm on Wednesday (03:00 GMT Thursday).
Cool boxes with doses of the Sputnik V COVID vaccine are loaded at Sheremetyevo airport, in Moscow [Argentina Presidency/Handout via Reuters]
Costa Rica announced last week that they had approved the vaccine, with health workers and the elderly now expected to be the first to receive jabs.
The country of about five million people had recorded more than 160,000 cases of coronavirus since Wednesday, with 2,065 deaths. Like many others in the region, his health system has been under severe pressure with the number of diseases.