Ecuador announced that it had received the first 8,000 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine on Wednesday, January 20.
it is the second South American country, after Chile, to use the product of the American group Pfizer and the German laboratory BioNTech.
"The first batch of vaccines to launch the immunization of the population has arrived!"
, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno announced on his Twitter account.
Read also: Coronavirus: more than 3,000 dead in Ecuador
The government has acquired around 2.1 million doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, of which 86,000 will be delivered to Ecuador by February for the initial and immediate phase of vaccination of medical personnel as well as residents of nursing homes.
The rest will be delivered from March for the second phase of vaccination, massive and free, with the reinforcement of 16 million other doses acquired from the British laboratory AstraZeneca, the American manufacturer COVAXX and via the Covax device of the World Organization (WHO) in favor of the poorest countries.
Ecuador, which has a population of around 17.4 million and approved the use of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine in December, currently has 234,315 cases of Covid-19 (1,347 per 100,000 people), including 14,437 deaths (83 for 100,000 inhabitants).
Doctors, scientists and elected officials, such as the mayor of Guayaquil, Cynthia Viteri, say the deaths are under-listed.
The number of deaths, all causes combined, has increased from nearly 58,000 between March and December 2019 to 100,000 for the same period of 2020, according to the civil status service.
President Moreno's government, which will complete its four-year term on May 24, plans to vaccinate nine million people at a cost of some $ 200 million.
