David Choquehuanca, Vice President of Bolivia, during a press conference in La Paz in 2020.DAVID MERCADO (Reuters)
The vice president of Bolivia, David Choquehuanca, and six cabinet ministers have tested positive for covid-19 in the spike in infections in the country. It is 37% of the Cabinet, made up of 16 officials. Choquehuanca has been infected for the third time, a week after receiving his first dose of the vaccine, something that he had avoided for eight months. The Government published a statement informing that, in addition to himself, those responsible for Foreign Relations, Government (Interior), Defense, Planning, Justice and Education were isolating themselves after undergoing tests.
Since December 27, Bolivia has been at the peak of its fourth wave of infections. In the last seven days, new cases have increased at an average rate of more than 9,000 a day, higher than at other times of the pandemic. The omicron variant of covid-19 has been officially detected in La Paz, the country's administrative capital, and doctors assure that it is also expanding in other cities where the outbreak is more intense, such as Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Tarija . As in the rest of the world, infections are rapid, the symptoms are milder among those vaccinated and the mortality rate is lower than ever before (around 0.8%). In Bolivia, the underreporting of infections and deaths is very high.
Vice President Choquehuanca's vaccination came after the opposition continually criticized him for not having done so last April, when he was due for his age. The Bolivian vice president explained that he had not been vaccinated before because he had been ill twice with the coronavirus. He also claimed that he had managed to get out of the disease by using ancient medicinal herbs and eating "even grass." In Bolivia it has been frequent that in rural areas the population has more confidence in these herbs than in other medical procedures. The delay was also the resistance to vaccination of the inhabitants of the Bolivian highlands, who constitute the social base of the vice president. Evangelical churches that openly oppose vaccines have an important influence in this area.
Last Monday, thousands of unions and residents of the city of El Alto (adjacent to La Paz), most of them of Aymara origin, protested against a government decree that orders all public institutions, including airports and terminals of buses, and many private ones, require as an admission requirement the vaccination card or a recent PCR. The government measure has also been rejected by various peasant sectors, who have warned by mobilizing. "In the countryside we know that we must heal ourselves with our ancestral medicine, and that those who have gone to the hospital have come out in a drawer," a peasant leader told the press. During the two years of the pandemic, in Bolivia the massive use of substances that are illegal for the treatment of covid-19 has been denounced,like ivermectin and chlorine dioxide.
The president, Luis Arce, decided to postpone the entry into force of this decree until January 26, arguing that the vaccination points were not prepared for an influx as massive as the one that occurred while the decree was operational, between January 3 and On January 5. In this short period, approximately half a million people were vaccinated, a figure that in the past was only achieved with several weeks of campaigning. Some opposition spokesmen doubt that Arce can finally impose his demand, since he is confronted by social groups that have a great capacity for mobilization and have traditionally been part of the ruling party. Some leaders of these groups have affirmed that they are neither anti-government nor anti-vaccine, but they do not want to be forced to be immunized.There are also anti-vaccine groups in other social segments and other parts of the country, but these are only small groups.
Former president Evo Morales criticized the leaders of social organizations linked to his party, the Movement for Socialism (MAS), for spreading to the public that "vaccines kill." The former Bolivian president joined Arce's effort to increase pressure on the population that has not yet been immunized, which according to world statistics is 60% of the 11 million Bolivians (although the vaccine is only available for children from the age of five). Bolivia occupies the penultimate place in South America in this field, only ahead of Venezuela. To raise this figure and avoid a new health collapse in the country, Arce wants to adopt the same policy that is applied today in other countries in the region and the world, but it has not been understood by his own followers.
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