It is at this moment that vaccine doses should be made available to healthy adults, as well as adolescents and children 🧑🏾👩🏻aged 12 or older who may be living with pre-existing medical conditions, so we can further reduce transmission rates.
As coverage in these priority groups grows, we will see reductions in the national hospitalization 🏥 and mortality rates.
Once countries have secured high coverage with primary series and booster doses 🩹 among these highest priority groups, PAHO recommends that they retool the vaccine rollout plans to focus on the next highest risk groups.
If they don’t, they will continue to experience outbreaks, their hospitals 🏥 will remain overstretched, limiting care for other conditions, and too many people will continue to die from this virus 🦠
🔸 We urge countries to prioritize high-risk groups.
Countries should refocus their efforts in protecting health workers, immunocompromised individuals, and the elderly, first.
If countries are already collecting these data, we urge them to share it with PAHO; and if they’re not, PAHO is here to support them.
🔸 That starts with collecting and reporting stratified vaccine data 📊
We urge countries to re-analyze their vaccination data to better understand their gaps – whether that’s in geography, age, sex or among key priority groups.
So, countries will be able to offer vaccine doses to those who remain unprotected.
As these doses arrive, we urge countries to make the necessary preparations to make the most of these vaccines 🩹
Due to the rapid scale up in purchases, donations, and COVAX deliveries 📦 at the end of 2021, progress was made on ensuring access to vaccine supplies, and countries will have enough stock to implement mass rollouts.
PAHO’s Revolving Fund, which so far has delivered almost 100 million doses, is on track to obtain 200 million doses on behalf of our region 🌎 this year, thanks to the Fund’s agreements with vaccine manufacturers.
