MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Vaccination campaign has reached more than half of Uruguay's population with at least one dose

Minister Salinas highlighted the seriousness of the work carried out by the National Vaccine Advisory Commission

Uruguay's Public Health Ministry Tuesday reported that around 1,807,000 people, that is 51.15% of the country's population, have already been administered at least one dose of an anti-coronavirus vaccine.

The next step will be to immunize those aged 12 to 18 with doses of Pfizer, the Uruguayan government announced.

Tuesday's results came just three months after starting the nation's full-scale immunization campaign.

According to the vaccination monitor of the Ministry of Public Health, 1,807,000 people, that is 51.15% of the population, have already received the first dose of the CoronaVac, Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines, while 29.12% have already received both doses.

Uruguay's announcement was simultaneous with the World Health Organization's (WHO) approval of the CoronaVac vaccine, produced by the Chinese company Sinovac, which is also manufactured locally by Brazil's prestigious Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo.

Regarding WHO's approval, Uruguay's Public Health Minister Daniel Salinas wrote on Twitter that “It reaffirms the seriousness of the work carried out by the National Vaccine Advisory Commission plus the ad-hoc group and Epidemiology of the Ministry of Public Health of Uruguay.”

Meanwhile, President Luis Lacalle Pou announced the immunization process for children aged 12 to 18 with the Pfizer vaccine: “Today the Vaccine Commission authorized the vaccination of 12 to 18 years, with which already at the end of this week we will be calling for them to be scheduled,” said Lacalle in a TV interview.

Lacalle Pou also announced the booking of more than 500,000 new doses of CoronaVac. “And there we will have all the vaccines for everyone.”

Despite the speedy vaccination, Uruguay is going through a large increase in infections and deaths from covid-19. In all of 2020, there were 181 deaths, while only in April and May of 2021 there were 3,302 fatalities, the Uruguayan Interdisciplinary Group for Covid-19 Data Analysis was quoted by the Montevideo daily El País as saying.

The National Emergency System has also recorded 3,064 new infections and 63 deaths in the past 24 hours, it was reported Tuesday.