Haiti, one of only four countries in the world that has not started vaccinating against covid-19, rejects the AstraZeneca laboratory vaccine offered by the World Health Organization (WHO) through the Covax mechanism, a government source told Efe on Tuesday.
The source, who requested anonymity, explained that the government refused to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine because of the “global unrest surrounding it”, considering that the country’s population “will not accept it”.
Haitian authorities have asked WHO to send vaccines from other laboratories in the country, but the organization is currently “recalcitrant” to provide an alternative and is trying to “press” Haiti by telling authorities that “deadlines are running out. “
“Because it is a gift, they want to impose it on us. Countries that have better systems than us have difficulty managing it,” the source said.
Haiti has the capacity to receive AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines and does not have the necessary refrigeration systems for the Pfizer vaccine.
In the first round of Covax vaccine allocation, 756,000 doses manufactured by the Serum Institute of India under license from AstraZeneca were allocated to Haiti.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has not yet answered Efe’s questions about Covax’s allocations to Haiti.
The Caribbean country has been relatively little affected by coronavirus, with a total of 12,732 confirmed cases and 251 deaths, according to official statistics.
Although these data do not reflect the true magnitude of the pandemic in Haiti due to the limited ability to detect the virus in the country, COVID-19 did not cause the collapse of health services.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday that 190 of the 194 countries in the organization had begun vaccination processes.
The Ethiopian expert did not clarify which four countries have not yet been able to start vaccinations, although he pointed out that through the Covax equal dose distribution program, 36 million vaccines have already been sent to 86 countries around the world.