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.
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.
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.
The good news is that vaccine supplies 📦 are expected to pick up this year.
Donations from the U.S., Spain, Canada, Germany, France, and other countries total some 26 million doses.
In countries that do report detailed data, we see worrisome gaps.
For example, in the US and in Anguilla, vaccine coverage among the elderly 👵🏿🧓🏾👴🏼 is lower than in younger groups who are less at risk for severe COVID disease.
These data 📊 are crucial to designing targeted vaccination campaigns, maximizing the impact of vaccine doses, and saving lives.
Without these numbers, we won’t know what proportion of high-risk groups, like the elderly 🧓🏼👵🏿, pregnant women 🤰🏽, or health workers 👨🏾⚕️👩🏽⚕️, have been protected.
We have serious blind spots because we can’t see detailed vaccination data 📊
We encourage countries to collect and report data showing vaccination coverage by age, sex and by risk group, where possible.
And if we zoom in on low- and middle-income countries in our region 🌎, more than 54% of people have yet to receive a single COVID-19 vaccine.
While 14 countries and territories have fully immunized 70% of their populations, the same number of countries have yet to protect 40% of their people.
