More than half of Costa Rica’s population has received at least one dose of a vaccine against Covid-19, government authorities reported Tuesday.
In recent weeks, as a result of large arrivals of doses from the United States, Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca, the vaccination campaign in this Central American country has accelerated. July was the month with the most doses administered since shots began in December 2020.
“As we have said repeatedly, every vaccine counts, and today we see it by saying that 50% of our total population already has at least the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. This data is with respect to the entire population; if we count the target population for vaccination which is just over 4 million inhabitants, we are already at 60% with at least the first dose,” said President Carlos Alvarado.
The exact data from the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS) indicate that 2,573,189 inhabitants have already received a first dose, while 851,000 have their complete vaccination scheme, which corresponds to approximately 17% of the population.
In July alone, 983,893 vaccines were administered. The vast majority were Pfizer doses after a U.S. donation and large shipments from that pharmaceutical.
In Costa Rica, the distance between the two Pfizer doses was originally planned for three weeks; however, in May, the Health Ministry decided to extend the time to 12 weeks in order to have a more partially vaccinated population.
According to figures from the organization Our World in Data, Costa Rica is the sixth country in Latin America with the highest percentage of vaccination of at least one dose after Uruguay (73.84%), Chile (72.25%), Argentina (55.24%), Dominican Republic (51.05%) and Ecuador (50.36%). In Central America, Costa Rica is the leader for this metric, followed by Panama and El Salvador.
Costa Rica has reported just over 400,000 Covid-19 infections since the virus was first detected in the country in March 2020. Its death count as of Tuesday is 5,070 people.
