[News] Colombia announces vaccination plan against COVID-19 with 40 million doses

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The president of Colombia, Iván Duque, announced on Friday the acquisition of 40 million doses of vaccines as part of a process of immunization of the po[CENSORED]tion that will begin in early 2021.

"I am pleased to tell Colombians today that we have closed bilateral negotiations with two pharmaceutical companies (...) We are already seeing light at the end of this tunnel," the president said on his daily television program.

Since the end of November, the government had announced the acquisition of 20 million doses through the Covax platform, a mechanism implemented by the World Health Organization to guarantee equitable access for emerging nations.

Additionally, Duque reported this Friday about the closing of confidential negotiations with the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and AstraZeneca, for 10 million doses each.

For his part, the Minister of Health, Fernando Ruiz, announced that "mass vaccination" will begin in February, except if the country agrees to "vaccine tests", in which case it would be done from January.

Health workers, older adults, people with comorbidities such as obesity or cancer, and basic education teachers will be part of the first immunized group.

The vaccine, free and universal, will seek to gradually cover 35.7 of the 50 million Colombians to generate herd immunity, Ruiz added.

The voluntary process will be carried out through private insurers.

The government did not indicate the total amount invested.

The announcement comes at a time when daily infections and deaths are growing in the country.

Since September 1, Colombia relaxed the confinement to bet on a strategy based on self-care, as well as the widespread use of masks and the prohibition of mass events.

At the moment, the new coronavirus has left more than 40,000 deaths and almost 1.5 million infections in the fourth largest economy on the continent.

In the world, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Saudi Arabia have already started vaccination campaigns.

The British laboratory AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, with whom it is developing this project, announced in November that their vaccine showed an average efficacy of 70%.

The vaccine developed by the American laboratory Pfizer showed greater than 90% efficacy in clinical trials.

However, the AstraZeneca project has the advantage of using a traditional technology that makes it much cheaper: it would sell for four dollars per dose compared to more than 25 the others.

The British vaccine also has the advantage of being able to be stored for at least six months refrigerated between 2 ° C and 8 ° C, which makes it easy to distribute, compared to that of Pfizer that must be kept at -70 ° C, a temperature much lower than that of a normal freezer.