Peru began distributing China’s Sinopharm vaccine on Tuesday morning, with primary health care workers taking precedence in the first phase of the launch.
The country has participated in clinical trials of the Sinopharm vaccine since last year and becomes the first Latin American country to launch the Chinese vaccine.
A group of doctors from Archbishop Loayza Hospital in Lima were the first to receive the vaccine on Tuesday morning, the Andean state news agency reported.
President Francisco Sagasti is expected to be vaccinated later on Tuesday.
On Sunday, Peru received its first shipment of 300,000 doses of China Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine and is expected to receive the remaining 700,000 doses on February 14th. The armed forces will be responsible for distributing the vaccine throughout the country.
On Monday, Foreign Minister Elizabeth Astete announced that her government had reached an agreement with Pfizer to provide 20 million doses of their vaccine, the Andean news agency reported.
Astete told a congressional committee that 250,000 doses would arrive in March and at least 300,000 in April, Andina reported.
“We were confident that Peru would receive at least 5,750,000 vaccines by July 1, and supply would increase significantly to 20 million by then,” Astete said.
Astete also told lawmakers that his government had signed an agreement to receive 6.6 million doses from Pfizer and AstraZeneca through the Covax program to vaccinate 20 percent of the population.
President Sagasti, who took office in November, has been criticized for delaying the conclusion of supply agreements for the vaccine.
Peru currently has 1,186,698 confirmed cases of coronavirus and has recorded 42,308 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
The country reported more than 6,000 cases a day, up from 2,000 cases a day in early January, while also facing a shortage of intensive care unit (ICU) beds, and oxygen during this new pandemic wave.
Peru has the fifth largest number of Covid-19 cases in Latin America, after Brazil, Colombia, Argentina and Mexico, according to JHU data.