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Published Tuesday, March 9, 2021
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Social Security authorities confirmed that there was no robbery of vaccines against covid-19 during an invasion of alleged thieves over the weekend.
No vaccine was taken from the community clinics Dulce Nombre and Agua Caliente districts in Cartago Province, according to Armando Villalobos, director of the Integrated Service Provision of the area where the clinics are located.
However, the thieves did some minor damage to the clinic's infrastructure. According to Villalobos, although the perpetrators managed to break the refrigerators where other types of vaccines were stored the cooling system was not damaged, nor was there any vaccine missing in the inventory control.
Vaccines stored in those refrigerators are being analyzed by the Immunization Program staff to determine the process to be applied with those doses.
Due to the incident, Social Security announced that it will reinforce the security and custody measures of the supplies used for the care of the pandemic.
The vandalism will not stop the vaccination campaign for those pre-selected in the Group-B of High Risk people.
This group includes people over the age of 58, regardless of whether or not they have any pre-existing health risk factors. It is estimated the treatment will be applied to 867,000 people.
To receive the treatment, participants must have a Costa Rican ID or a residency ID, known as DIMEX specific for immigrants with resident status.
Social Security asks for people who qualify in the second group, to visit the local public clinic, known as Ebais, to be registered. In the case of the people who are already registered in the Social Security database, known as EDUS, they will be contacted by phone to register for a vaccine date.
Today, the Ministry of Health provided the most up-to-date status of covid-19 in the country:
• 386,295 doses of covid-19 vaccines purchased from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer / BioNTech.
• Of these 149,812 doses have been applied. Reaching a national vaccination rate of 2.9 per 100 inhabitants.
• 372 new covid-19 cases are reported, bringing the total to 16,833 current active cases.
• 25,650 foreign-born people have been infected as part of the 207,832 cases since March, approximately 12.34% of the total cases. Of these, authorities confirmed the death of 32 foreign-born patients. But since October, there is no updated information about foreign-born deaths due to covid-19.
• 244 patients are being treated in public hospitals, where 139 patients are in ICUs in delicate health conditions. And 105 patients are in recovery rooms. Many of the remaining infected patients are quarantined in their homes.
• 188,151 patients have fully recovered, an 91% recovery rate of the total cases since March.
• 700,259 covid-19 tests have been conducted in Costa Rica since March, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering of Johns Hopkins University in the U.S.
• 2,848 deaths are listed as covid-19 related, approximately 1.4% death rate.
Readers can see the current number of infected people in each district on the National Distance Education University on its Covid-19 Map.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the pandemic has killed more than 2.6 million people worldwide.
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How could authorities speed up the vaccination campaign against covid-19? We would like to know your thoughts on this story. Send your comments to news@amcostarica.com
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