Luis Arce Completes 100 Days in Office as President of Bolivia

The president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, acknowledged on Tuesday to governors, municipalities and other levels of power of the nation the need to intervene in the vaccination against COVID-19, at a time when his government leaves behind the first 100 days of administration.

Through a message broadcast on Twitter, the president greeted those in charge of administering the Russian vaccine Sputnik V to health workers and vulnerable individuals.

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He also recognized those who create the refrigeration conditions to transfer and store the Pfizer-BioNtech and Sinopharm vaccines.

The fight against the coronavirus pandemic is one of the strategic objectives of Arce's administration, which found itself with a health situation aggravated by the improvised measures taken by the de facto government of Jeanine Añez.

Since taking office last November 8, the new Executive adopted comprehensive measures in response to the second wave of COVID-19 infections and managed to acquire 2.2 million diagnostic tests.

In addition to medicines, reagents, equipment, and supplies for laboratory work, the purchase created conditions to prioritize mass testing, make early diagnoses, confront the virus from its initial phase, and reduce lethality.

Another result of these first 100 days is the procurement of vaccines. A total of 5.2 million doses of Sputnik V and five million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford drug will be acquired.

The Bolivian people will also have access to 5.1 million doses of other immunizers through the Covax mechanism, Arce announced at the beginning of January.

Last February 2, the Ministry of Health and Sports completed Sputnik V doses' shipment to the nine departments to vaccinate health personnel. As of last Monday, 20,000 doses had already been administered.

On the other hand, it is expected that by the end of February, Bolivia will have received close to one million doses of vaccines from AstraZeneca-Oxford (900,000) and Pfizer-BioNtech (92,430) to reinforce the mass vaccination against the coronavirus.

President Luis Arce's government announced last February 11 that 500,000 doses of the vaccine produced by the Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinopharm would also arrive in the country this month.