Peru begins vaccinating its elderly population

Thousands of retired elderly people gathered in various parts of Lima to be vaccinated against the coronavirus Wednesday.

Executive Director of Peru's Social Security, Fiorella Molinelli, told said they are set to vaccinate a total of 11,700 insured older adults.

Another as yet an unknown number of poorer elderly people, many of whom never had a formal job, are being vaccinated by workers from the Ministry of Health.

The elderly are being vaccinated with doses from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.

Peru currently has more than 1.3 million people confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 and 48,163 recorded deaths from the new coronavirus.

In addition to Pfizer, Peru has purchased 1 million Sinopharm vaccines that it applied to protect doctors and nurses.