Covid-19 Vaccine Supplies Expanding Here, but Monthly Shot Rate Must Triple

Colombia Health Minister Fernando Ruiz announced March 10 that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer just confirmed that Colombia will get another 2.2 million doses of its highly effective Covid-19-prevention vaccines next month (April 2021).

This upcoming delivery comes on top of the nearly 1.5 million Sinovac doses received here last weekend — supplementing an earlier delivery of some 200,000 more Sinovac vaccines — plus 317,000 doses of Pfizer doses already delivered here.

As a result, Colombia will have received at least 4.3 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the coming days, once including the 2.2 million doses already delivered here.

In parallel, Colombia seems on-target to achieve its initial goal of 1 million persons vaccinated by March 20, according to President Ivan Duque.

To date, Colombia already has signed agreements with several pharmaceutical companies for delivery of roughly 65 million Covid-19 doses over the coming months, mainly from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson (Janssen), Moderna, Sinovac and AstraZeneca.

However, to reach its year-end goal of getting 37 million people vaccinated, Colombia needs to more-than-triple its current rate of about 1 million vaccinations per month, Ministry data indicate.

As of March 10, only 403,000 people had been vaccinated here since the campaign began on February 17, according to the Health Ministry.

Encouragingly, shot rates are ramping up since the first days of the vaccination campaign, now at around 62,000 persons daily. But that rate needs to hit more than 100,000 persons daily to meet the 37-million-persons target.

Data-entry delays from various health-care providers and local/departmental agencies partly might explain the relatively slow rate of reported daily vaccinations, Health Minister Ruiz stated in a March 10 bulletin.

For example: Antioquia had received 185,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines as of March 9, but had only reported 46,000 actual vaccinations, or just 25% of its total dose receipts, according to Health Ministry data.

In contrast, Bogota seemed to be doing a better job, reporting that its vaccinations were already at 46% of total doses received.

Remarkably, relatively remote territories and areas including Choco, Amazonas, Casanare, Buenaventura and Vichada all reported vaccination rates of at least 90%, best in all Colombia.

However, another key factor explaining the delay between vaccine-shipments and shots-into-arms is the several-weeks-of-waiting required between the first and second shots of the two-dose regimen for the Pfizer vaccine.

Vaccinators Expanding

Meanwhile, boosting the total number of certified Covid-19 vaccination professionals also will help accelerate the daily shot rates here, according to the Ministry.

Today, Colombia has more than 30,000-such trained-and-certified vaccination professionals, with another 21,000 due to gain their required Covid-19 certifications by the end of March 2021, according to the Ministry.

In addition, another 107,000 health workers have signed-up for Covid-19 vaccination training, which will greatly expand capacity in the coming months, the Ministry adds.

Antioquia’s Front-Line Health Workers

Meanwhile, the Antioquia departmental government reported March 9 that 76% of front-line health workers here have already gotten their Covid-19 vaccinations.

Those health workers – along with people 80 years and older – are first priority in the national Covid-19 immunization campaign.

The Antioquia government calculates that front-line health workers and adults 80-and-over total 200,000 persons here, nearly all likely to be vaccinated before the end of March.