MEXICO CITY, June 24 ― Mexico will donate over 400,000 AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine doses today to the so-called Northern Triangle Central American nations of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, the Mexican foreign ministry said yesterday.
The vaccines will be shipped on military flights. Guatemala and Honduras will receive 150,000 doses each, while El Salvador will receive 100,800 shots, the foreign ministry told Reuters.
Only 3.8 per cent of Guatemala's population has received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose. In Honduras the percentage is 4.9 per cent and in El Salvador 22.3 per cent, according to figures from Our World in Data.
The three countries have so far received doses of AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer, Sputnik V, Janssen and Sinovac.
The Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) on June 9 called on countries to share excess vaccine doses, warning that if the spread of Covid-19 continues at current rates it will be years before the virus is controlled in the Americas.
At the time, PAHO said just 10 per cent of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean have been fully vaccinated, with a particularly acute situation in Central American and the Caribbean. ― Reuters
