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Published Friday, April 9, 2021
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
On Thursday, the National Vaccination Commission approved the use of the AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine.
According to the commission, the vaccine will be applied for Group-C of High Risk except for pregnant women or those who are breastfeeding.
This group includes people between the ages of 18 and 58 with certain health risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, chronic respiratory disease, chronic kidney disease, obesity and cancer.
The commission also agreed that the patient will be informed of the brand of the vaccine they will receive, such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer or any other that will be acquired in the future. But the patient can not select the type of vaccine due to limited supply.
The AstraZeneca vaccine has an interval period between the two doses of 12 weeks.
The commission specialists have confirmed that the European Medicines Agency, which is an organization of the European Union in charge of the evaluation and supervision of medicinal products, determined that the possibility of the AstraZeneca vaccine causing blood clots is extremely improbable.
It is estimated that 6.5 cases per million vaccinated people could have this result. "Even less frequent than the one that occurs with the use of combined oral contraceptives, which is 9 to 12 cases per 10,000 women," they said.
However, experts have said that they are keeping an eye on all the new scientific evidence that will be issued on the developments of all vaccines against covid-19. So, changes in vaccination plans could be announced.
The Group-D and Group-E of High Risk will be contemplated also in the AstraZeneca vaccination campaign.
The population of the Group-D of High Risk include Ministry of Public Education workers, the workers of the private education system, the workers of children's shelters and the workers and prisoners of the jail system.
The last group to be vaccinated will be the Group-E of High-Risk, which are health science students, technicians who work at Social Security and people between the ages of 40 and 57. And those who carry out in-person work activities or whose activity is of great importance for the productive sector of the country.
On Wednesday, the first cargo of 43,200 AstraZeneca doses of the treatment arrived. This shipment was purchased from the COVAX system of the World Health Organization.
In December 2020, the government signed an agreement with the British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to buy one million doses of its vaccine, AZD1222.
In the meantime, Pfizer's vaccine will continue to be used in Group-A and Grup-B of High-Risk, which are people over the age of 58, regardless of whether or not they have any pre-existing health risk factors.
This is because the period between both doses is approximately 21 days, being shorter than the AstraZeneca vaccine, which implies acceleration in the goal to cover the most vulnerable population, the commission said.
On Monday, the third DHL shipment arrived with 115,830 vaccine doses purchased from Pfizer, totaling 865,995 doses of the 4 million doses brought to the multinational pharmaceutical corporation.
So far, 504,930 Pfizer vaccines against covid-19 have been applied. Of those already vaccinated, 291,368 people received the first dose and 213,562 people have their complete treatment upon receiving the second dose.
The country reaches a vaccination rate of 9.78 per 100 inhabitants, according to the statistics of the Vaccine National Information System.
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