A 2021 hoping to curb the coronavirus in Honduras and the world

Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Honduras and the whole world welcome a new year with mourning for the 1.8 million deaths already left by covid-19, but encrypting their hopes in the promising vaccine to end the pandemic.

The country closed 2020 with more than 3,100 deaths, while contagions are close to 122,000, since March, when it began to expand the deadly disease pandemic, according to official records.

For the first quarter, Honduras expects to receive the first batch of AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccines and begin immunizing health personnel who are in the front line of care.

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

The covid-19 pandemic and tropical storms Eta and Iota have been the worst Honduras has suffered in 2020 in the social, economic and environmental.

Covid-19, in addition to deaths and infections, left more than 500,000 people unemployed and paralyzed its productive apparatus for more than three months.

The situation was exacerbated by tropical storms Eta and Iota, which left thousands of families homeless and homeless, as well as severe damage to productive infrastructure.

The losses caused by the shutdown and the effects of Eta and Iota exceed 100 billion lempiras ($ more than 4.140 billion), 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 amounts to 45,676,000 lempiras ($ 1,879 million), the ECLAC report said.

To the losses caused by the two natural phenomena is added the crisis derived from the pandemic that, according to the BCH, they exceed 55 billion lempiras ($ 2,264 million).

BCH President Wilfredo Cerrato said the losses meant a “historic drop of about 9% to 10%” in gross domestic product (GDP). “When we added up the impact of production, we’re talking about a strong impact of 100,000 million lempiras ($ 4,143,000), and that’s a very strong figure,” he explained.

immunization

Some fifty countries have already begun their vaccination campaign, just a year after the first alert issued by the Chinese authorities to the World Health Organization (WHO).

China was the first country to launch a vaccination campaign reserved for those most at risk (employees and students going abroad, caregivers, etc.).

More than five million doses of Chinese experimental vaccines have been injected into the country, which it approved andthis Thursday one developed by Sinopharm.

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

This vaccine was approved by Belarus and Argentina, which began their vaccination campaign on Tuesday.

The United Kingdom was, for its part, the first Western country to authorize the vaccine developed by the United Kingdom American-German 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 him Canada and the United States on December 14th.

Later Switzerland on the 23rd and Serbia on the 24th, almost all of the 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 Modern American laboratory vaccine, 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 more than 130,000 doses in five days.

Keys on the AstraZeneca vaccine that will come to the country 1. Practice The AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine has the advantage of being affordable (it costs about 3 euros a dose). In turn, it is easy to store: it can be stored at the temperature of a refrigerator, between two and eight degrees Celsius, unlike the Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines, which can only be stored long-term at very high temperatures. low (-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 capable of fighting the new variant of the coronavirus, which is responsible for a resurgence of cases in the UK. “For now, we believe it should be effective” against this mutation, Soriot told the Sunday Times. “But we can’t be sure, so we’ll rehearse.” He also assured that new versions will be prepared just in case, but that they hope not to need them: “You have to be prepared.” 3. British It was made by the British group AstraZeneca next to Oxford University. It is the second vaccine approved by the MHRA, after the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine distributed in the UK since December 8 and administered to more than 600,000 people. The United Kingdom, one of the countries in Europe most affected by the pandemic with more than 71,000 dead, ordered 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine of which 40 million will be available by the end of March. Vaccination is due to begin this Monday, January 4th. AstraZeneca says it will be able to manufacture 3 billion doses of its vaccine for everyone in 2021.