The Health ministry this week began vaccinating senior citizens and military and police personnel, in the second phase of the nationwide vaccination program against Covid-19. The phase, over several weeks, includes everyone over the age of 60, as well as indigenous communities. The phase began Monday in Lima for people over the age of 80.
The first phase was launched in early February when the first of two vaccination doses was given to all medical personnel in state and private health services. Part of a first million vaccines from China’s Sinopharm are being used for this phase, for which the government paid approximately $26 million.
The second phase began Monday with 50,000 vaccines from Pfizer, and will continue with a further 167,000 Pfizer doses scheduled to arrive mid-week. In April, 200,000 doses are expected weekly from Pfizer.
The government is using health service registrations as well as the national identity registry, Reniec, and the foreign resident registry to advise vaccine recipients. The logistics are no mean feat, considering there are also close to one million Venezuelan refugees, many of whom are not yet registered.
Negotiations for Vaccines
The vaccine doses arriving mid-week and in April have been negotiated through the Covax Facility, a platform launched in April last year by the World Health Organization, the European Commission and the French government to ensure that everyone in the world has access to Covid-19 vaccines. By bringing together governments, global health organisations, manufacturers, scientists, private sector, civil society and philanthropy, with the aim of providing innovative and equitable access to COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments and vaccines, the platform ensures that participating countries, regardless of income level, have access to Covid-19 vaccines as they become available.
Peru has also signed a contract directly with Astra-Zenaca-Oxford for 14 million doses, to be delivered as of September this year, and is negotiating with Johnson & Johnson (for 5 mn doses), Moderna (12 mn), Curevac (13mn), Sinovac (7mn) and Novavax (6 mn). Negotiations are also in progress with Russia for the Sputnik V vaccine.
President Francisco Sagasti said that while the vaccination program will continue throughout 2021 to cover the whole country, his government plans to close negotiations for vaccine supplies within the next few weeks so that the new government — to take over the administration July 28— will have the program in place and guaranteed.
