A 2021 with the hope of reducing coronavirus in Honduras and around the world

Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Honduras and the rest of the world are welcoming a new year of mourning for the 1.8 million deaths that COVID-19 is already leaving, but they are putting their hopes on the promising vaccine to end the pandemic.

The country closed 2020 with more than 3,100 deaths, while infections approached 122,000 in March, when it began to spread the deadly disease pandemic, according to official records.

For the first quarter, Honduras expects to receive the first batch of vaccines from AstraZeneca-Oxford and begin immunizing medical personnel in the first line of care.

LEA: The first batch of AstraZeneca vaccines is expected to arrive in Honduras in March

Covid-19 pandemic and tropical storms Eta and Iota were the worst hit by Honduras in 2020 social, economic and ecological.

Covid-19, in addition to deaths and infections, left more than 500,000 people without jobs and paralyzed its productive apparatus for more than three months.

The situation has worsened with tropical storms Eta and Iota, which have left thousands of families affected and homeless, as well as serious damage to productive infrastructure.

The losses caused by the shutdown and the effects of Eta and Iota exceed 100,000 million lempiras (more than $ 4,140 million), according to estimates by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Central Bank of Honduras.

The damage left by Eta and Iota is equivalent to “45,676 million lempiras ($ 1,879 million), the ECLAC report points out.

To the losses caused by the two natural phenomena is added the crisis derived from pandemic which, according to BCH, exceeds 55,000 million lempiras ($ 2,264 million).

BCH President Wilfredo Cerrato said the losses were a “historic decrease of about 9% to 10%” of gross domestic product (GDP). “When we add the impact of production, we are talking about a strong impact of 100,000 million lempiras ($ 4,143 million), and that is a very strong figure,” he explained.

Immunization

About fifty countries have already started their vaccination campaign, just one year after the first alert sent by the Chinese authorities to the World Health Organization (WHO).

China was the first country to start a vaccination campaign for those most at risk (employees and students abroad, carers, etc.).

More than five million doses of Chinese experimental vaccines have been injected into the country, which has also approvedThis Thursday, one developed by Sinopharm.

Russia followed on December 5, when it began vaccinating at-risk workers with Sputnik V, the vaccine developed by Russian National Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology Gamaleya.

The vaccine was approved by Belarus and Argentina, which launched the vaccination campaign on Tuesday.

The United Kingdom was in turn the first Western country to authorize the vaccine developed by US-Germany Pfizer-BioNTech alliance.

His immunization campaign began on December 8 and more than 950,000 people have already received the first of two doses. The country was also the first to approve the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, which will be injected from 4 January. In the West, they followed Canada and the United States on December 14.

Then Switzerland on the 23rd and Serbia on the 24th, almost the entire European Union on Sunday, Norway on Sunday and Iceland on Tuesday, all with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The United States and Canada were the first two countries to authorize the vaccine from the American laboratory Moderna, on which the EU will issue a decision on January 6.

More than 2.8 million Americans have already received a dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the EU, Germany is the country that has vaccinated the most so far, with over 130,000 doses in five days.

Keys to the upcoming AstraZeneca vaccine 1. Practice The AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine has the advantage of being affordable (costs about EUR 3 per dose). At the same time, it is easy to store: it can be stored at refrigerator temperature, between two and eight degrees Celsius, unlike Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines, which can only be stored for a long time at very low temperatures (-20 ° C). in the first case and -70 ° C in the second). This facilitates large-scale vaccination. 2. Effective According to AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot, the vaccine is able to fight the new variant of coronavirus, which is responsible for a re-emergence of cases in the United Kingdom. “For now, we think it should be effective” against this mutation, Soriot told the Sunday Times. “But we can’t be sure, so we’ll try.” He also assured that the new versions will be prepared for any eventuality, but that he hopes he will not need them: “You have to be prepared”. 3. British It was produced by the British group AstraZeneca together with the University of Oxford. It is the second vaccine approved by the MHRA, after the one from Pfizer / BioNTech distributed in the United Kingdom on December 8 and administered to over 600,000 people. The United Kingdom, one of the countries in Europe most affected by the pandemic with more than 71,000 deaths, has ordered 100 million doses of AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine, of which 40 million will be available by the end of March. Vaccination should begin on Monday, January 4. AstraZeneca says it will be able to produce 3 billion doses of vaccine worldwide in 2021.