The Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) confirmed five cases of the COVID-19 variant SARS-Co-V-2 in St Lucia.
A release from the island’s Department of Health and Wellness said two British nationals and three St Lucians had the virus, but all have since recovered.
The two Brits were diagnosed on December 17 and 23. The St Lucians who are from Dennery, Micoud and Babonneau, were also diagnosed in December.
On December 14, 2020 the United Kingdom Public Health Agency reported a variant of SARS-CoV. The identified strain had been in circulation from September 20, 2020 within the United Kingdom. The virus has since been detected in Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Australia but the risk of importation into the Caribbean and rest of the world was rated as high due to incoming travel from the United Kingdom and Europe. Cases of this new strain have since been confirmed in Caribbean islands including Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica.
Full article President Lacalle Pou tweeted that Uruguay had closed deals with Pfizer/Bio/Tech and Sinovac for the acquisition of Covid 19 vaccines Public Health minister Daniel Salinas tweeted, vaccines ensured for our Uruguay, while vice president Beatriz Argimon added excellent news.
Uruguayan president Luis Lacalle Pou announced on Friday that a deal for the purchase of Pfizer/BioNTech and China s Sinovac anti Covid-19 vaccines has been reached. No further details were advanced, only that the president will announce details of the operation Saturday midday.
The government has just finished an agreement with Pfizer and Sinovac for the supply of vaccines to our country. At the same time we continue to negotiate the purchase of vaccines from other suppliers. In next hours we will give further information, Lacalle Pou tweeted.
Colombia exceeds 50,000 COVID-19 deaths
January 21, 2021
The coronavirus killed more than 50,000 people in Colombia over the past year, the country’s Health Ministry said Thursday.
In its daily update, the Health Ministry reported 395 registered COVID-19 deaths over the past 24 hours, bringing the total on 50,187.
After months of relative calm, a surge in hospitalization have been saturating municipal healthcare systems since the middle of December in the country’s largest cities, which is driving up the daily number of deaths to levels of the first peak in August.
Daily COVID-19 deaths
The health ministry registered another 15,366 newly infected people, bringing the total number of infections since the beginning of the pandemic on 1,972,345 infections.
COVAX Announces new agreement, plans for first deliveries
COVAX Announces new agreement, plans for first deliveries 22 January 2021 Reading time:
COVAX announced the signing of an advance purchase agreement for up to 40 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine; rollout to commence with successful execution of supply agreements.
Additionally, COVAX announced that, pending WHO emergency use listings, nearly 150 million doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford candidate are anticipated to be available in Q1 2021, via existing agreements with the Serum Institute of India (SII) and AstraZeneca.
COVAX is therefore on track to deliver at least 2 billion doses by the end of the year, including at least 1.3 billion doses to 92 lower income economies in the Gavi COVAX AMC.