Teachers receiving shots as 1M vaccine doses land in El Salvador

On Sunday 1 million doses of the CoronaVac vaccine manufactured by Chinese pharmaceutical company SinoVac arrived in El Salvador.   With the arrival of this two dose vaccine, El Salvador will now have the quantity of vaccine necessary to start vaccinating the general public.

Prior to the arrival of the shipment from China, El Salvador had received three smaller shipments of AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines which have been deployed to inoculate front-line healthcare workers and members of the police and military.  The CoronaVac shipment represents one half of a 2 million dose purchase by El Salvador from SinoVac.

The first Salvadorans who will begin to receive the CoronaVac vaccine today are the country's teachers in advance of schools reopening on April 6.

The plans for which group will receive the vaccine in which order are never known until there is some tweet or statement to the press shortly before.  After public school teachers, it appears that the government plans to start vaccinating the elderly and medically at risk.   The government has placed under seal its national plan of vaccination and has prohibited its disclosure to the press or public.  This follows the government's refusal to make available other public health information related to the pandemic including the national plan for the healthcare system and all information relating to the processes of COVID-19 testing by the government.

In recognition of the growing numbers of people who have been vaccinated worldwide, El Salvador has also revised its entry requirements for people coming into the country.  Travelers can now show proof that they were fully vaccinated or show that they received the results of a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of their flight to El Salvador.  

CoronaVac is currently being shipped to several South American countries and Mexico.   To show his confidence in the vaccine, the Minister of Health, Francisco Alabi, received his first dose of the vaccine on Monday.  The CoronaVac vaccine has had varying results in different spots in the world, with efficacy rates above 83% reported in Turkey, and lower rates in Brazil where a variant of the disease is dominant.   The vaccine is still highly effective at preventing serious disease and death according to these reports.