MEXICO CITY — In Latin America, a region hard hit by pandemic, poverty and flawed health care systems, many experts fear that large-scale coronavirus immunization campaigns could prove a logistical nightmare, even as vaccinations are set to begin.
Home to 8.4% of the global population, Latin America and the Caribbean account for 30% of the world’s 1.6 million COVID-19 deaths and 19% of the 76 million COVID-19 infections, according to data from Johns Hopkins University and the World Bank.
Mexico and Chile plan to start inoculating health workers by month’s end with the vaccine developed by U.S.-based Pfizer Inc. and its German partner, BioNTech, which is already in use in the United States and Britain. Other Latin American countries are unveiling ambitious plans for large-scale immunization campaigns employing varying vaccines, most still in the testing stage — and virtually all developed in the United States, Europe or Asia.
But health care analysts fear that Latin America’s largely ineffective response to the virus could worsen during the massive undertaking of vaccinating hundreds of millions of people. Plagued by severe income inequality, health care woes and pervasive corruption, the region appears as ill-prepared now as it was when the virus first struck early this year.