Published Thursday, April 16, 2020 

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

Switzerland- based pharmaceutical company Novartis delivered the first part of a donation of 108,000 hydroxychloroquine tablets on Wednesday, Social Security reported.

The donation made by Novartis company also includes 5,000 units of surgical masks and 5,000 pairs of gloves, which were purchased for internal use by Novartis personnel and will be transferred to Social Security.

"We want to thank the company for the donation of this product, which is highly demanded throughout the world and that Costa Rica has been included in the countries that receive this type of donation," said Román Macaya Hayes, president of Social Security. “We all face this pandemic together and thus we will move forward.”

The hydroxychloroquine that Novartis distributes, through the firm Sandoz, meets the quality criteria required by the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, said Social Security in its statement.

The donation made by the pharmaceutical company is made without any compensation requirement and without any requirement of past or future purchase by the Social Security, said authorities. Also, Sandoz will not receive any monetary benefit from Social Security for this donation.

However, Social Security would pay customs, import, and transportation costs of the medication to warehouses.

"We are facing an unprecedented situation, in which we join the efforts of the government and society to find ways to mitigate the current public health crisis and its socio-economic implications," said Pedro N. Afonso, president of the Novartis Group for Central America and the Caribbean. "We recognize the value of working together and we are confident that only in this way will we successfully overcome this difficult situation."

According to Social Security, this medication is regularly used to combat malaria, autoimmune diseases like lupus and chronic polyarthritis. It is a treatment option for patients suffering from covid-19 associated conditions.


On Wednesday the Ministry of Health confirmed the fourth death of a covid-19 patient.

According to a brief summary of the case, an 84-year-old Costa Rican man tested positive of being infected with covid-19 on April 1. He was admitted into intensive care at San Juan de Dios Hospital on April 5. The patient suffered from high blood pressure. His pre-existing illness plus his age played major risk factors for contracting covid-19, said the ministry.

This is the second death reported this month. The first was a 45-year-old Costa Rican who entered the country from the U.S. in March, where it is presumed that he was infected. He was hospitalized for 10 days in the intensive care unit of the same hospital, San Juan de Dios, in San José.

The two other patients died in March. They were hospitalized in intensive care at San Rafael Hospital in Alajuela Province, both 87-years-old.

Related to the last updated report of the covid-19 cases in the country, on Wednesday the authorities confirmed an increase of 8 new patients infected with the virus, taking the total to 626 cases in the country.

Of the infected patients, 16 are being treated in public hospitals, where 11 of them have been reported in intensive care with delicate health conditions.

The patients' ages range from 1 to 87 with an average age of 38. Of those, 25 are children under the age of 13, 570 are between 18 and 70 years old, and 31 are elder patients over the age of 70.

Of those infected, 302 are women (48%) and 324 are men (52%). It was reported 43 foreigners are infected. Authorities stopped informing about the specific nationality of those patients.

It is reported that 67 coronavirus patients have fully recovered, according to the Inciensa Laboratory, company in charge of managing the medical test to confirm or rule out the virus. They collect samples to declare patients' recovery or not.

"Sometimes it takes up to four covid-19 tests per person to declare a patient as fully recovered," stated the Lab in its statement. A person is declared fully recovered until two covid-19 medical tests come out negative.

Since the virus was first reported in the country on March 6, 511 people have been ruled out.


For a daily updated number of patients infected in each district throughout the country, visit the Covid-19 map of the UNED University.

As of today 2,060,927 people have been confirmed infected worldwide. The pandemic has killed 134,178 patients and 511,356 patients made a full recovery, according to recent statistics reported by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.


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