* They urge immunization in the face of increased hospitalizations.
The Ministry of Public Health (MSP) urges the population to get vaccinated against influenza and covid-19, due to the high demand for hospital care, especially in the department of Alto Paraná, where the percentage of those vaccinated does not reach 40% of the population. So far, about 970,000 people have received the flu vaccine nationwide.
The director of the Expanded Immunization Program (PAI), Héctor Castro, highlighted the importance of vaccination against influenza and covid-19, in addition to measures to avoid contagion, taking into account that, currently, there is a high demand for consultations in hospitals and hospitalizations, which can be prevented with vaccines.
He mentioned that people who are within the risk group, children under 36 months, pregnant women, people over 60 years of age, and people between these ages who have respiratory, kidney, diabetes, heart, obesity problems should receive these vaccines.
He stressed that, according to a recent study, vaccination against influenza in the 2022 season managed to reduce a third of hospitalizations in Paraguay. Regarding the vaccine against covid-19, he stated that “you have to apply the vaccine against covid-19, since regardless of how many doses you have received until last year, starting this year we are talking about annual doses.”
So far, some 970,000 people have already received the influenza vaccine. 31 percent of the doses applied correspond to adults over 60 years of age, 13 percent to children under three years of age, and six percent to pregnant women.
The director of the PAI also highlighted that the health system made an effort to obtain the quadrivalent vaccine, which was only available in the private sector. “Now we already have it for free, it is the same composition, it is the same vaccine,” he said at a press conference.
Finally, he pointed out that, based on the existence of vaccines, it can be deduced that there are areas where people do go to receive the doses while in other regions of the country the application is scarce.
In this sense, he indicated that while there is a high percentage of vaccinated in Asunción, the department of Alto Paraná does not reach 40%, “and it is an extremely important department in terms of the dynamics of transmission of contagious diseases,” he remarked.