Roughly half the people of the Caribbean and Latin America have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has declared.
But the PAHO Director Dr Carissa Etienne said that despite the delivery of 750 million doses across the Americas, vaccination levels vary sharply across the region while infections and deaths skyrocket in some countries as their health systems buckle under the sheer number of sick patients.
Nearly 3.5 million additional doses of COVID-19 vaccines were slated to arrive in the region this week that will help us reach even more people”, she said.
Assistant Director Dr Jarbas Barbosa da Silva Jr., said the quarter-billion million doses include the single-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine and double-dose vaccines.
But despite the number of vaccinations administered, many countries remain far behind in coverage, the PAHO chief warned.
“Less than 20 per cent of people have been fully vaccinated in Guatemala, Jamaica, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and vaccination coverage remains in single digits in Nicaragua and Haiti,” she said.
Some of the most populous countries, like the United States, Brazil, and Colombia, are seeing a levelling of new infections after weeks of declining trends, the PAHO chief noted.
