Colombia Covid-19 Vaccinations Will Cover 35 Million People by December 2021
Colombia Health Minister Fernando Ruiz announced today (June 30) that because of acceleration in Covid-19 vaccination rates, Colombia is likely to achieve its stated goal of having its 35 million most-vulnerable-people fully vaccinated by December 2021.
“We see an important growth in daily vaccinations, having started with an average of less than 50,000 per day but currently we are vaccinating more than 300,000 people daily, which gives us a vaccination rate enabling us to close this process in December 2021 with 35 million vaccinated,” Ruiz stated.
Deputy Health Minister Luis Alexander Moscoso added that thanks to growing international deliveries of vaccines, Colombia is exceeding its goal of delivering more than 1 million doses each week to cities, towns and territories throughout the country.
As of June 28, 17,570,929 doses had already been applied nationally, of which 6,331,714 correspond to second doses and 51,708 to single doses (the latter being the single-shot Janssen vaccine).
Meanwhile, Colombia has already received 24.8 million doses of vaccines from various manufacturers — including 1.5 million doses just-now being provided this week to scores of private companies giving vaccinations to millions of their workers and families.
By September, 35 million Colombians will have received at least their first dose, with the remainder of vaccinations coming during the fourth quarter, according to Minister Ruizr.
Coverage with the first dose is already at 89% in people over 80 years of age; 79% in the 75-79 group; 77% in the 70-74 group; 73% for 65-69 year-olds; 67% for 60-64 years; 54% for 55-59 years; 44% for 50-54 years; and 9.5% in the just-opened 45-49 year-old-group. Front-line health workers are now 100% vaccinated, he added.
“Colombia is today the fourth country in Latin America in the number of vaccines applied and the second in speed of application since the beginning of the different programs. We will close June with more than 26 million vaccines received, not counting possible donations, making us the third biggest vaccinator in Latin America and with 4-million-more-people than we had earlier projected,” he added.
