The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warned that Covid-19 cases are on the rise in the Americas and that, without prevention actions, there is a risk that this boom will be worse than the one that many countries went through last year. And to face the ravages of the pandemic, the government of Canada announced a new million-dollar contribution.
On World Health Day, Trudeau’s government will allocate an additional 1.2 million dollars to PAHO for the purchase of essential equipment and supplies in the fight against Covid in the Bahamas, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica and Suriname, as well as in Trinidad and Tobago.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Canada has donated more than US $ 8 million to support PAHO’s technical cooperation to address the Covid pandemic in the Americas.
The gap between the number of vaccines and essential supplies against Covid administered in rich countries versus vaccines for low and middle-income countries, “increases daily and becomes more grotesque every day,” said the director of World Health Organization at a press conference.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recalled that as early as January he had warned that the world was “on the brink of catastrophic moral failure unless urgent measures are taken to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines and supplies.”
Crisis in the Americas
When Brazil registers for the first time more than 4 thousand deaths a day, countries such as Paraguay, Uruguay and Cuba experience outbreaks of greater magnitude than those they faced last year and in Jamaica the centers operate beyond their capacity, said Carissa Etienne, Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
Etienne said that there are still many months to go before the entire region can access the vaccine and that this is a crisis that is still active. “The economies of the region are in a constant emergency,” he added. And it is that since January 1, 2021, PAHO counted 19.7 million cases of Covid-19 and 472 thousand deaths on the continent.
The expert warned that in several countries the advance of the pandemic is “overflowing” the hospitals. In two Brazilian states the occupancy rate of intensive care units exceeds 80%. “Mortality increases when this happens because patients have difficulty finding the care they need and health workers are overburdened,” he said.
Canadian help
The PAHO director said that the pandemic is placing great stress on the workers and health systems of the Caribbean countries, so “we thank the government of Canada for supporting the Covid treatment for the Caribbean countries that are struggling due to the pandemic; your contribution will help save lives and show how we can all unite in solidarity to defeat this virus. “
This contribution is part of a five-year subregional program between PAHO and Canada, which aims to reduce the health consequences of emergencies and disasters in the Caribbean through better preparedness and a more resilient health sector. It is based on the long relationship between the organization and the Canadian government to strengthen health emergency risk management in the Region of the Americas.
According to PAHO, for more than 30 years, the Canadian government has supported efforts to improve emergency preparedness, mitigation, and response throughout the Latin American and Caribbean region.
Controversy
Recently, Canada came under fire for announcing its plan to withdraw 1.9 million doses from the COVAX global vaccine delivery program aimed primarily at the poorest countries.
The ad was heavily criticized inside and outside of Canada. Critics insist that COVAX vaccines were intended for lower-income countries that could not afford them and not for the wealthy like Canada.
On the other hand, Canada will receive this week a total of 3.3 million doses of vaccines against covid-19, the country’s authorities announced on Tuesday.
Trudeau reported that Pfizer will advance the shipment of 5 million doses of its vaccine to June, which is in addition to the million that the pharmaceutical company will deliver weekly during the month of May.
And Anita Anand, head of Public Procurement, assured that Canada will begin to receive the first shipments of the single-dose vaccine from Janssen, from the Johnson & Johnson group, at the end of April. In this way, Canada will receive the 44 million doses by the end of June that the Trudeau government promised.
A counterproductive strategy
Furthermore, the uneven distribution of vaccines is not just a moral outrage. It is also economically and epidemiologically counterproductive. Some countries are racing to vaccinate their entire population, while other countries have nothing.
“This can buy security in the short term, but it is a false sense of security,” Tedros said before explaining, as he has done on numerous occasions, that “the more transmission of the virus occurs, the more variants can appear. And the more variants that emerge, the more likely one of them will avoid vaccines.”
He also indicated that as long as the virus continues to circulate anywhere, people will continue to die, trade and travel will continue to be interrupted and the economic recovery will take even longer.
