Luis Escobar / La Paz
58% of the country’s population has already received the full schedule of vaccines against Covid-19 and Bolivia is already approaching community immunity. Experts explained that due to this advance in immunization, the number of infections is declining.
The anticovid vaccination report from the Ministry of Health indicates that 6.9 million people nationwide received the full immunization schedule. This progress means that 58% of the national population is already protected against this disease.
Guillermo Cuentas, former Minister of Health, said that two variables must be taken into account to identify the degree of immunity of the population. “The vaccine generated 58% immunity and a second element must be incorporated into this data: the number of infected, which is around 903,000. The sum of both factors (6.9 million vaccinated and 903 thousand with neutralizing antibodies), represents the total number of people who are protected against the pathology. With this, we are close to 70% of the population in one way or another protected, “he said.
For this reason, fewer and fewer infections are registered, confirmed the Minister of Health, Jeyson Auza, in the presentation of the epidemiological report. “For this week, 582 cases have been reported (…) We are talking about the lowest number of cases that has occurred in a de-escalation throughout the pandemic,” he said.
8.4 million citizens only received the first dose. This group represents 71% of the entire national population. For Accounts, people who did not complete the immunization schedule will have the same chance of contracting a complicated clinical picture.
“This percentage of the population -which due to carelessness and sanitary indiscipline did not comply with the vaccination scheme- will not be able to prevent their surroundings, their family or their co-workers from getting sick. The Government and mayors should encourage vaccination. It will be necessary to apply -in addition- coercive measures, but (in recent months) they did not give a result either, “said the professional.
Immunologist Carlos Guachalla stated that to achieve herd or community immunity, 80% of people must be vaccinated at the national level, but currently the country does not exceed 60% immunization.
“Citizens are not getting vaccinated with the second, third or fourth dose because the intensity of the infection has decreased. The variants that circulate are more transmissible, but their severity has decreased. This gave us a false confidence that did not allow us to reach adequate levels of immunization”, declared the specialist.
Vaccine Safety
An official statistical study prepared with data from the National Health Information System (SNIS), from June 1, 2021 to March 15, 2022, shows that Bolivia did not present deaths due to the anticovid vaccine.
This report, according to the Ministry of Health, “totally distorts statements by some groups that said that two months after the dose of the anticovid vaccine is applied, there would be fatal consequences.”
Auza explained that of the 11,245,949 doses applied at that time, only 8,415 registered “mild side effects.” In percentage terms, it only represents 0.074% of the vaccinated population at the national level.
Vaccination is maintained in San Francisco
The municipal secretary of Health, Cecilia Vargas, reported that the mobile office is parked in Plaza San Francisco, “a place with many people and that has been well located” because people go there to receive the anticovid vaccine.
The municipal authority urged the population of La Paz to go to the mobile and fixed vaccination points.
“Prepare for a possible fifth wave (of Covid-19) that is milder, depending on the severity of the previous wave with the predominance of Omicron,” he said. He announced that at the San Francisco square vaccination point there will be two doses of Sinopharm, intended for children from five to 11 years old, Pfizer for adolescents from 12 to 17 years old and the rest for adults.
