Covid Vaccine Mandates Scrapped in Costa Rica
On Wednesday, the new President of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves, and the Minister of Health, Jocelyn Chacón, confirmed that the vaccine against covid-19 will no longer be mandatory in Costa Rica.
Chaves had promised that when his term began on 8 May he would end the mandatory Covid injection policy.
In his first decree after taking office, Chaves dropped his country’s mask mandate and the requirement that public employees get vaccinated.
In November 2021, Costa Rica became the first country in the world to announce it would make Covid injections mandatory for children. Costa Rica has long mandated vaccines, and such requirements are supported by the country’s laws. However, three months after the announcement, Costa Ricans were still bitterly divided over mandatory Covid injections for children.
“Today [3 August] vaccines are no longer mandatory and any action against someone who does not want to be vaccinated is a violation of the law,” the president emphasised.
The announcement came after almost 93% of Costa Ricans had their first dose, 87 percent had a second, 51 percent a third and 10 percent a fourth dose, according to the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social – the Costa Rican Social Security Fund which is in charge of most of the nation’s public health sector.
As well as the immediate end to compulsory vaccination Chaves said that there will be an investigation into the contracts signed by the previous government as he believes excessive amounts of doses were purchased.
According to the World Health Organisation, as of 29 July 2022, a total of 11,504,591 vaccine doses had been administered in a country with an estimated population of 5,2 million. The previous government of Carlos Alvarado signed contracts with Pfizer and AstraZeneca.
“We are going to investigate why it is that they bought so many vaccines when the information was that the market had been saturated,” Chaves said in his weekly press conference after the Governing Council.
According to Chacón, there was an intention of the Commission to “force people to get vaccinated to spend the vaccines,” which, at first, she did not want to believe but said that now “I see it differently.”
As of Wednesday, AstraZeneca had completed delivery according to their contract, but Pfizer had not. With Chaves’ decision, deliveries of vaccines pending in the Pfizer contract were suspended until further notice.
See more here: algora.com
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Header image: The Guardian
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