Roundup: With mass vaccination, Bolivia ends 2021 with low COVID-19 mortality rate

La Paz (Bolivia), January 3: Bolivia ended 2021 with COVID-19 mortality rate at 0.8 percent, thanks to a mass vaccination program, the Ministry of Health said Sunday.
According to the ministry, 58 percent of the vaccines of the program came from Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinopharm.
Deputy Foreign Trade and Integration Minister Benjamin Blanco told Xinhua that Chinese vaccines are the most widely applied in Bolivia, and that a new batch of Sinopharm shots arrived on Dec. 26, 2021.
The Sinopharm vaccine is an inactivated vaccine and uses a classic platform to immunize people against COVID-19, and "it does promote an immune response," Blanco said.
National Director of Epidemiology at the Ministry of Health Freddy Armijo explained that Bolivia reduced its COVID-19 mortality rate from 6.2 percent in the first wave of the pandemic to 0.8 percent in the fourth wave, and that about 60 percent of the eligible population has been fully vaccinated.
"The country is better prepared because it has taken care to secure 100 percent of the vaccines for the vaccine eligible population over five years of age, with even the reinforcement of a third dose to a large part of the population. In addition, we equip hospitals, and we buy millions of drugs," he said.
According to Armijo, the vaccines have proven to be effective and not a single person in the country has died due to receiving the vaccine.
He added that the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization have also highlighted Bolivia's reduction of mortality rate of the disease.
As of Friday, Bolivia registered a total of 607,481 cases and 19,711 deaths from COVID-19, according to the Ministry of Health.
To date, 9.82 million doses of vaccines developed by Sinopharm, Sputnik V, AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Janssen have been administered in the country.
Source: Xinhua