Vaccination in Colombia will begin on February 17 2:46
(CNN) -
Colombia will begin its vaccination campaign against covid-19 on Wednesday, President Iván Duque said on Monday.
Duque said during his daily televised speech that the government had decided to advance the vaccination schedule, which began on Saturday.
Colombia's vaccination campaign begins weeks after neighboring countries like Chile and Argentina started theirs.
Chile ahead of Mexico and Argentina (and all of Latin America) in vaccination against covid-19.
These figures show it
Colombian health workers will be the first to receive the vaccine.
The country received its first shipment of 50,000 doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine on Monday.
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Duque said that the Government had decided to launch the vaccination campaign in the cities of Montería and Sincelejo, in the north of the country, to indicate that the vaccines are destined for the entire country.
Large cities such as Bogotá, Medellín and Cali will begin vaccinating their residents on Thursday.
Verónica Machado, a nurse in the intensive care unit at Hospital Universitario Sincelejo, will be the first Colombian to receive her first dose of vaccine on Wednesday, Duque said.
The covid-19 outbreak in Colombia is the second worst in Latin America, according to a count of confirmed cases by Johns Hopkins University.
To date, 2,198,549 cases and 57,786 deaths have been reported in Colombia, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Covid-19