Colombia is the first Latin American country to receive vaccines through the Kovacs mechanism

Bogota-Sana

Colombia received the first batch of anti-Corona vaccines through the Kovacs mechanism established by the World Health Organization to enable low-income countries to keep pace with rich countries in the unequal race between the two parties to obtain vaccines to combat the pandemic.

"Today marks an important step ... Kovacs received its first shipment of vaccines in the Americas and the first country to receive it is Colombia," the news agency AFP quoted Colombian President Ivan Duque as saying in a statement.

The shipment that Bogota received includes 117 thousand doses of the Pfizer Bionic vaccine, thus Colombia is the fourth country in the world to obtain vaccines through the Kovacs mechanism, and Ghana and Ivory Coast in Africa and South Korea in Asia preceded it.

The Kovacs mechanism, which was established to ensure that poor countries are not excluded from vaccines against Corona, and that the rich countries are excluded, seeks to distribute two billion doses by the end of the year.

Colombia launched a nationwide vaccination campaign on February 17th, aiming to vaccinate about 35 million of its 50 million population by the end of the year.

Colombia, in which the first confirmed case of Covid 19 was recorded on the 6 of March of last year, is the second country most affected by the virus in Latin America after Brazil in terms of the number of confirmed infections with more than two million and 250 thousand infected people, of whom about 60 thousand died.