China vaccines provide hope to the Amazon
Easier transportation, storage make Sinovac jabs ideal for forest regions
Hit hard by COVID-19, isolated Amazon rainforest communities in Latin America are getting some relief as a Chinese vaccine rollout is expected to keep at bay the pandemic that has left a trail of illness and death in the lungs of the world.
Intensive care units and cemeteries in Amazon cities like Manaus in Brazil and Leticia in Colombia were overwhelmed in recent months as a fresh wave of infections, led by a more contagious P.1 Brazilian strain of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes the COVID-19 respiratory illness — wreaked havoc on local communities.
But things are now starting to change, as distribution of vaccines developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech is offering hope that the pandemic resurgence can be halted in the worsthit areas.
Experts noted that Sinovac’s Coronavac offers logistics advantages compared to some vaccines from the West as the Chinese jabs do not require ultra-cold storage chains, making them more suitable for deployment in remote regions.
Coronavac “can be stored in common refrigerators and does not require ultra-freezing chains, allows it to be brought to more distant areas”, said Carlos Álvarez, national coordinator of COVID-19 studies in Colombia for the World Health Organization.
“It is an advantage of this vaccine.” Colombia, and Mexico, welcomed the first batch of Coronavac over the past weekend.
Mexico began to administer the vaccine to hundreds of residents aged 60 and over at a vaccination site on Feb 20.
The first batch to Colombia arrived in a shipment of 192,000 doses from China to Bogota that were received in a high-profile ceremony that included President Ivan Duque and China’s Ambassador Lan Hu.
Of those, 40,355 doses were sent onwards to Leticia and other jungle areas by air, with vaccinations scheduled to begin on Feb 23.
“Given its proximity to Tabatinga (a border town in Brazil) and the triple border with Peru and Brazil, which did not make the right containment and mitigation strategy, Leticia has already seen three peaks of the pandemic,” said Luis Hernandez, director of the Covida project, an initiative from Los Andes University in Bogota, Colombia, to track the virus.
“It looks like the second and third peaks are related, beyond the spread of the P.1 strain, to the conditions of the population, agglomerations and border crossings,” he noted.
Last year, the city of Leticia had the highest prevalence rate for the virus, with almost 60 percent of the population testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, which meant exposure at some point.
In Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s Amazonas state, the figure has surpassed 76 percent, according to a study.
“This unfortunate city has become a sentinel for how natural population immunity could influence future transmission. Events in Manaus reveal what tragedy and harm to society can unfold if this virus is left to run its course,” the study said.
The city of Manaus is connected by a river to Tabatinga and Leticia, 1,100 kilometers away. It can take 37 hours to get from the border cities to Manaus by boat.
For WHO’s Álvarez, getting the vaccines for the whole population in the Amazon and particularly in the Colombian side of the border right away, skipping the national strategy of vaccinating the population
by groups starting with healthcare workers and the elderly, is the right choice.
“Vaccination in the Amazon is very important. From an epidemiologically perspective, is the right time to do it, given the presence of the P.1 strain in that territory,” he said.
The Covida project’s Hernandez agrees. “The sooner, the better, since there will be less chances for the virus to create new strains. If the population does not get vaccinated, there will be more chances of having new strains,” he said.
The challenge of conducting massscale vaccination in the Amazon is enormous, given the conditions of the jungle and the poor infrastructure to navigate its rivers and land.
“It takes one and a half hours to get from Leticia to La Chorrera in a
single-engine aircraft. By boat it can be between 15 to 20 days,” noted Juan Seneray, a nursing technician at the only healthcare center in La Chorrera, a town located on the riverside of the Igará Paraná river, some 450 kilometers north-west from Leticia.
Despite being a small and hard to reach town with a population of only 3,878, La Chorrera has been deeply affected by the virus and seven people have died from it.
With the arrival of Sinovac’s vaccines, there is plenty of hope among the population in the Amazon, most of which is of indigenous origin.
“Indigenous authorities are working on the sensibilization campaign and most of the members of the community will accept… the jab. We need the vaccines to reach rural areas like ours as soon as possible,” said Seneray.
Malaysia launched its national vaccination program on Feb 24, giving a much needed shot in the arm to the country’s ongoing battle against COVID-19.
Three days after the first shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine arrived in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian government started rolling out its threephase immunization program.
Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin launched the country’s inoculation program by getting the first dose of the vaccine at the local health office. It was televised live by the public broadcaster Radio Televisyen Malaysia.
More than 500,000 frontliners are expected to get vaccinated during the first phase which will last until April.
Analysts note how this program can change the course of Malaysia’s campaign against the pandemic and revive an economy that shrank 5.6 per cent — its worst performance since the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis.
Leow Chiuan Yee, senior lecturer at the Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), said that public health data have shown how a national immunization campaign has led to a drop in hospital admission and reduced the risk of contracting a serious illness.
Citing research conducted by the University of Edinburgh, the University of Strathclyde and Public Health Scotland, Leow said that the risk of hospitalization fell about 84 percent 28 days following the national COVID-19 immunization in the United Kingdom.
“In the UK, viral infections were reported to have dropped by twothirds since the beginning of lockdown, especially in London, there was an 80 percent drop in infection rates following COVID-19 vaccination,” he said, noting the data have shown the effectiveness of current COVID-19 vaccines against the viral infection.
“The hope is for the vaccine to improve (the economic) condition (of Malaysians),” said Serina Abdul
Rahman, visiting fellow at the ISEASYusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
Serina said the program might also lead to the issuance of vaccine passports, prompting borders to reopen and allow more economic sectors to recover. But she cautioned a vaccine is “not a magic pill” that will solve all the problems the pandemic has wrought.
“The vaccine is not failsafe and there is the possibility of rising numbers of infections even if (more people) are getting vaccinated,” Serina said.
Malaysia has 285,761 confirmed cases as of Feb 23, according to the World Health Organization. This is the third highest number in the Southeast Asian region. In January, Muhyiddin enforced another round of lockdown measures and put the whole country under a state of emergency until Aug 1 to curb the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus.
Malaysia allocated 2.05 billion ringgit ($510 million) for vaccine purchases, including those from China, and aims to vaccinate at least 80 percent of its more than 30 million people, with the goal of achieving herd immunity by 2022. The vaccination program will run in three phases.
The first, which started on Feb 24 and will last until April, will inoculate frontline personnel including employees of the Ministry of Health, Armed Forces, police, Civil Defense Force and the Malaysian Volunteer Department.
The second phase is scheduled from April to August for senior citizens aged 60 and above and vulnerable groups with morbidity issues, as well as persons with disabilities. The third phase is to be conducted from May to February 2022 for those aged 18 and above.
But analysts said that compared with other countries like China and Singapore, Malaysia’s vaccine rollout was slow. The London-based research and consultancy group Capital Economics said that the slow vaccine rollout means that movement restrictions “will need to remain in place for longer, holding back the economic recovery”.
Fitch Solutions said the lockdown measures combined with slow vaccine rollout “would further dent growth prospects in 2021, affecting especially private consumption”.
Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, said the country’s economy has to be reopened to sustain livelihood and encourage consumption. But he also acknowledged that with the country fighting a pandemic, the government has to “balance between life and livelihood”.
Leow of USM hopes that the completion of the national COVID-19 immunization program can help in reviving the national economy. But he said health protocols need to be maintained including wearing masks, hand-washing, and social distancing.
He said following these protocols are “still critically required until this global pandemic is completely controlled and resolved”.
“This is because there is still lack of scientific data to show that vaccinated people can’t carry and transmit the virus to other people. For safety reason, the COVID-19 SOP is still a must until the viral infection is successfully contained,” Leow said.