People are dying who did not have to die : anger grows in Guatemala as Covid surges | Global development theguardian.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theguardian.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The second phase of the national vaccination plan against Covid-19 in Guatemala, for people over 70 years of age, is progressing slowly due to the population’s distrust of the vaccine and the lack of access to the virtual registry of the Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance.
With 1,035 vaccination centers set up in the 22 departments of the Central American country, the health ministry has only administered the complete scheme (two doses) of vaccination to 2,521 people and the first dose to 257,247 people since it began to apply immunizers on February 25.
Mistrust and lack of internet access slow down vaccination in Guatemala. (Photo internet reproduction)
Since February, the country has gotten 658,200 total vaccine doses in five shipments.
Over 90 percent of the vaccines that the country received were AstraZeneca s Covishield vaccine. It also received vaccine supplies from Israel and India.
Guatemala s government procured 16 million doses from Russia for US$79.6 million.
Guatemala paid half the amount, while Russia offered to deliver 100,000 doses in the last week of April. However, the arrival of the vaccines was delayed, according to a Channel News Asia report.
The Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor s Bureau has opened an investigation into the reported anomalies in the Sputnik V procurement process.
Monica Posada, a primary school teacher, admitted that she does not have any confidence in the government.
Guatemala City, Guatemala – Maria Zita arrived before dawn. She had her required appointment confirmation but with reports of large crowds and confusion at some Guatemala City COVID-19 vaccination sites, she wanted to make sure she got her jab.
“We arrived at five o’clock in the morning,” Zita, 70, told Al Jazeera on Monday morning outside a sports complex building in the Guatemalan capital, where her son stood with her at the front of a short line before vaccinations began at 8am.
Up-tempo music from a nearby outdoor aerobic dance class played as more people trickled into line. Army Health Service personnel arrived and joined civilian health workers at the site, where an official told Al Jazeera they expected to administer 300 doses that day. Zita was the first.
perpetuate this invasive and harmful use of mass surveillance tools. Civil society must fight back.
Acting without people’s knowledge let alone their ability to consent police and other local authorities in
Buenos Aires,
Brasilia, and
Uruguay are increasingly using facial recognition technology for mass surveillance, identifying people’s faces and checking them against a database of suspects. Everyone surveilled in this way is effectively treated as a criminal, without having done anything wrong. Now, even as the global movement behind banning facial recognition gains steam, these governments are working to make these privacy-invasive practices official. Unless that changes, we will see a deeper “chilling effect” that limits people’s exercise of freedom of movement, association, and protest.