Vaccination against the Covid-19 disease managed to favorably impact the management of the pandemic, marking the difference between December 2020 and 2021 in hospitalizations, deaths, cases, among other indicators.

This is shown by the epidemiological data of the Minsa, according to which 2021 closed with 173 hospitalized patients (148 in the ward and 25 in intensive care units or ICU), which represents 92.41% less hospitalized than in 2020 when there were  2,279 (2,077 in ward and 202 in ICU). In other words, the risk of serious illness from Covid-19 has been reduced.

Figures released by the Minsa show that in December 2021 there were 63 deaths from  covid-19, 93.32% less than in 2020 when deaths totaled 943.

Unvaccinated deaths
The health authorities point out that 88.2% of the people who died from Covid-19 from February to December 31 of last year, did not have the complete vaccination scheme.

2021, 18,178 cases were registered, that is, 62,806 (77%) fewer cases than in the same month of 2020, when 80. 984 were reported.

Coverage of the target population to be vaccinated, over 12 years of age, reached 90% with first doses and 81.4% with second doses.

Paulino Vigil De Gracia, the researcher of the National Research System of the National Secretariat of Science, Technology, and Innovation, stated that the fourth wave of Covid-19 cases facing the country is being navigated very differently, thanks to vaccination and measures of biosafety such as the use of masks.

The researcher recalled that the main objective of vaccines is to avoid hospitalizations and deaths.

The pediatrician, infectologist and clinical researcher Xavier Sáez-Llorens, says that Panama has carried out the vaccination process very well.

For Sáez-Llorens, the good aspects of the process are: the acceptance of the citizenship to the vaccination, the great availability of doses, the quality of the vaccines acquired, the logistics of the Expanded Program of Immunization,  and the sacrifice of the vaccinating personnel.

The ugly
In addition, he described as "ugly" the corruption during the pandemic, the misinformation generated by the anti-vaxxers, and the use of ineffective and potentially toxic medicines by the Minsa.