MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguay makes donation of 12,000 AstraZeneca vaccines to Paraguay

“All second doses of AstraZeneca for Uruguayans are properly secured and stored,” Salinas said.

Uruguayan health authorities Friday made a donation to Paraguay of 12,000 doses of the AstraZeneca anticovid-19 vaccine, some of which are due to expire June 28 and the rest by the end of August, it was announced.

Paraguay's Health Minister Friday made the announcement through its Twitter account, while its Uruguayan counterpart explained that the decision to donate these vaccines came after consultation with the National Vaccination Advisory Commission about their possible use in children under 60 years of age to which a negative answer rendered the drugs with no prospect receivers within the country.

On April 4, Uruguay received the first 48,000 doses of AstraZeneca through the Covax fund of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the government, heeding the recommendations of the National Vaccination Advisory Commission (CNAV), decided that they be administered only to those over 60 years of age.

Therefore, Uruguayan Health Minister Daniel Salinas guaranteed through Twitter that this donation will not affect the country's vaccination scheme. “All second doses of AstraZeneca for Uruguayans are properly secured and stored,” Salinas said.

Uruguay has already received two batches of AstraZeneca vaccines through the Covax mechanism of the World Health Organization (WHO). The first batch had been 48,000 while the second 50,400.

The Uruguayan Government has been very critical of the WHO strategy due to the deadlines managed to send doses with such a delay that the Executive had to go out on his own in search of other vaccines.

President Luis Lacalle Pou said during the XXVII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government that there was “a failure of international bureaucratic institutions” in the supply of vaccines against covid-19.

Uruguay is vaccinating people mostly with the American Pfizer and the Chinese Sinovac drugs. Up until Friday evening 2,145,685 people have been inoculated with the first dose of Sinovac, AstraZeneca or Pfizer while 1,358,600 have received the second dose of either Pfizer or Sinovac, which means 60.56% of the population has had the first dose and 38.35% has completed the full treatment.