Amazonas has nearly a third of cities with 40% or less adults vaccinated

Amazonas has 30% of cities with only 40% or less of full vaccination coverage in people over 18, according to information from the Health Surveillance Foundation.

The state as a whole has only 66% of the adult population with the complete vaccination schedule against Covid-19 and is well below the national average, which registers more than 80% of adults vaccinated with two doses or a single dose against the coronavirus.

The data are even more contrasting when taking into account Amazonian municipalities such as Anamã, São Paulo de Olivença, Tapauá and Santo Antônio do Içã, which did not reach even 20% of the vaccinated population.

In an interview with CNN Radio, the Fiocruz Amazonas epidemiologist, Jessem Orelana, stated that the immunization against Covid-19 exposed a historical problem in the region.

“Vaccination is internalizing an old problem here in the North region of access to health services by the population, largely due to the low number of health professionals, especially in smaller cities”, he said.

According to Jessem, most cities in the interior “have only one nurse who takes care of the vaccination program, tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, diarrhea, they do a thousand things at the same time and in the end they can’t do anything with precision and quality, it’s a old problem and that vaccination ends up exposing.”

The pediatrician and director of the Brazilian Society of Immunizations, Flávia Bravo, also mentioned the difficulties in accessing this population, and made an alert.

“While we have low vaccine coverage in some places, the heterogeneity of coverage will not allow for the control of the pandemic, there will always be a pocket of susceptible people, virus circulation and the possibility of the emergence of variants that may escape the vaccines or even the immunity of those who already had the disease.”

As a result of the lack of vaccination, the interior of Amazonas has already registered an increase in cases. “Precisely in this region, which is where we have the most difficulty in guaranteeing the population’s vaccination, we have common outbreaks of Covid-19, in the upper Rio Solimões, upper Rio Negro and in the city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira. It is an indication that we have not got the epidemic under control”, lamented Jessem.