Spain will donate nearly 70,000 Covid-19 vaccines to Costa Rica, the government announced Monday.
“The country will receive 69,600 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19 as part of the donation from Spain through the multilateral mechanism COVAX,” President Carlos Alvarado announced via social media networks.
“We appreciate the donation from this brother country that will support the vaccination process. Every shot counts.”
The doses are anticipated to arrive later this month.
This will represent the second batch of Covid-19 vaccine donations received by Costa Rica. Last month, the United States government gifted 500,000 Pfizer/BioNTech doses, a shipment which helped the country launch mass-vaccination campaigns and expand vaccine access to nearly all adults.
Costa Rica has imported more than 4.35 million doses since December 2020. The vast majority (3.1 million) were purchased directly through Pfizer, with 571,000 received from a contract with AstraZeneca. Some 173,000 were delivered through COVAX, an initiative to promote global vaccine equity, while the remaining 503,100 correspond to the U.S. donation.
The latest available data indicate Costa Rica has administered 3.4 million doses across 2.57 million people. The country’s population is about 5.1 million people.
