■ De­spite hard-fought ef­forts and gen­er­ous donor sup­port, many vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions re­main un­pro­tect­ed ■

Wash­ing­ton D.C. (PA­HO) — While 63% of peo­ple in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean have now been vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19, cov­er­age re­mains un­even, with 14 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries im­mu­niz­ing 70% of their pop­u­la­tions and the same num­ber fail­ing to reach even 40% cov­er­age, the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion Di­rec­tor Caris­sa F. Eti­enne said dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing on Wednes­day.

With 7 mil­lion new in­fec­tions and over 34,000 deaths re­port­ed in the re­gion since last week, the PA­HO Di­rec­tor high­light­ed “wor­ri­some gaps” in the vac­ci­na­tion of at-risk pop­u­la­tions – with some coun­tries re­port­ing low­er cov­er­age among the el­der­ly com­pared to younger groups who are less at risk for se­vere dis­ease.

Dr. Eti­enne said the full ex­tent of the dis­par­i­ty re­mains un­known, as de­tailed da­ta is lim­it­ed, so it is vi­tal that “coun­tries col­lect and re­port da­ta show­ing vac­ci­na­tion cov­er­age by age, sex or by risk group.”

“These da­ta are cru­cial to de­sign­ing tar­get­ed vac­ci­na­tion cam­paigns, max­i­miz­ing the im­pact of vac­cine dos­es and sav­ing lives,” she said.

Look­ing to­wards up­com­ing COVID vac­ci­na­tion cam­paigns, the di­rec­tor an­nounced that vac­cine sup­plies are ex­pect­ed to pick up in 2022.

Thank­ing donors that al­ready “helped our re­gion se­cure dos­es when sup­ply was lim­it­ed,” Dr. Eti­enne said fur­ther do­na­tions from the Unit­ed States, Spain, Cana­da, Ger­many, France and oth­er coun­tries to­tal some 26 mil­lion dos­es.

PA­HO’s Re­volv­ing Fund, which has so far pur­chased al­most 100 mil­lion dos­es, is al­so on track to ob­tain a fur­ther 200 mil­lion dos­es on be­half of the re­gion this year.

As these dos­es ar­rive, Dr. Eti­enne urged coun­tries to start mak­ing the nec­es­sary prepa­ra­tions for vac­cine roll-out, in­clud­ing in­vest­ing in vac­ci­na­tion pro­grams, col­lect­ing and re­port­ing de­tailed vac­cine da­ta, and pri­or­i­tiz­ing high-risk groups.

“Coun­tries should re­fo­cus their ef­forts in pro­tect­ing health work­ers, im­muno­com­pro­mised in­di­vid­u­als and the el­der­ly, first,” the Di­rec­tor said.

She al­so sent a spe­cial mes­sage to the mil­lions of adults in the Caribbean who have yet to re­ceive their vac­cines.

“I am a med­ical doc­tor, wife, moth­er and grand­moth­er. I could not wait to get my vac­ci­na­tion, I was so anx­ious for the well­be­ing of my­self and my 95-year-old moth­er,” Dr. Eti­enne said.

“Please don’t de­lay, get vac­ci­nat­ed to­day,” she urged. “COVID-19 vac­cines are safe and ef­fec­tive and they’re the best way to pro­tect our­selves, our fam­i­lies, and our com­mu­ni­ties from this virus.”

Turn­ing to the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion in the re­gion, the Di­rec­tor re­port­ed that the rise in in­fec­tions ap­pears to be slow­ing down in places hit ear­li­est by the Omi­cron vari­ant.

Most new cas­es were re­port­ed in North Amer­i­ca, but surges con­tin­ue across Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca and deaths in­creased by near­ly one-third in all sub-re­gions.

In the Caribbean, deaths have more than dou­bled in Cu­ba, the Ba­hamas, and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and oth­er is­lands, in­clud­ing Mar­tinique and Guade­loupe are see­ing the virus spread rapid­ly among young and un­vac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tions.

“These trends show that we must con­tin­ue to sus­tain every part of our COVID re­sponse,” Dr. Eti­enne said. “Vac­ci­na­tions, test­ing, and con­tin­u­ing pub­lic health mea­sures like mask wear­ing and so­cial dis­tanc­ing re­main cru­cial.”