Healthcare workers are vaccinated in Colombia

The COVID-19 vaccination process began in nine clinics and hospitals in the Colombian capital on Thursday.

At the moment Bogota has only 12,500 doses of the 28,600 vaccines it requires to immunize front-line healthcare personnel, the priority group in Colombia for the first stage of a vaccination plan that began on Wednesday in the country.

The doses are from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, the first to arrive in Colombia last Monday in a shipment of 50,000 vaccines.

The government has agreements to receive 68 million vaccines from pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca, Moderna, Sinovac, Pfizer, Janssen and Covax, the platform of the World Health Organization that seeks equitable access to vaccines.

The Colombian government is aiming to vaccinate more than 30 million people this year, out of a population of about 50 million but vaccines have been slow to arrive.

Colombia has reported 2.2 million infections since the pandemic began, and 58,134 deaths.