BAJA HEALTH WORKERS TO GET DOSES
Elderly, those with conditions set for Feb., March vaccinations
The first doses of COVID-19 vaccine are expected to arrive in Baja California on Tuesday, the state’s top health official said Friday. Those will be exclusively for medical workers. The state will roll out vaccines for the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions in February and March.
Baja California Secretary of Health Alonso Pérez Rico said 9,000 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine will arrive on Tuesday under the protection of the National Guard and be transferred to a secret military location previously established between the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA), the Secretariat of State Health and the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS).
“As the president (Andrés Manuel López Obrador) said, the vaccine will be for everyone. It will be completely free, but we have to do this in a orderly way,” he said.
Earlier in the week, state health officials said they would use military forces to safeguard the immunizations and prevent any robbery attempts.
Health personnel will have to go to a meeting place to be registered to receive the vaccine. Then they will go to the unnamed military bases to get their shots, where they will use a QR code and identification cards to verify their information.
State officials are putting together schedules and shifts to roll out the distribution.
“When their shift is over, (the military) will be waiting for them in trucks and they (the medical personnel) will be taken to the places (to get the shots) and then
to go home,” said Pérez Rico. “There will be countershifts: If I am in the morning I will finish my shift and in the afternoon I will get vaccinated; if I am on at night, in the morning they will vaccinate me, and that’s how the dynamics will be.”
A total of 30,000 COVID-19 vaccines are expected to arrive sometime in January, and they will also be entirely for the medical sector, the health secretary said Friday, including those in the state, federal and military health systems.
“I want to highlight something very important, that those 30,000 vaccines will go directly to the health sector, the workers on the front line fighting this pandemic,” said Pérez Rico.
He added that the elderly and people with conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes are next in line in a national rollout plan being followed in all the states. People with those specific conditions have suffered particularly high rates of death from coronavirus, according to data tracked by the Mexican government.
Gov. Jaime Bonilla said more vaccine doses are expected to arrive later for the general population, but stressed that the first phase of vaccinations must be for people who work in the highest risk levels for being infected and thus infecting others in the community.
In Baja California, 5,782 people have died as a result of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic and nearly 60,000 people have tested positive for the disease. Health experts say these official numbers are likely much lower than the actual number of cases in the region because of a lack of available testing in Mexico.
On Thursday, hospitals were stretched to capacity, with only three beds available to treat patients with coronavirus symptoms at Hospital General in Tijuana and six beds available at Clinica 1 in the federal health care system. State officials said the situation had slightly improved by Friday morning, with statewide hospital occupancy at 78 percent and 199 hospital beds available for COVID-19 patients across the state.