“Although Venezuela paid every penny, it did not receive a single dose of the Kovacs mechanism. These are level two sanctions. We were able to pay 120 million dollars and we did not receive a single dose, and only an apology,” he said.
Delcy Rodriguez spoke at a conference entitled “Teaching Teachers – Latin America at the Crossroads” broadcast on Venezuelan state television.
“The worst tightening of the blockade against Venezuela occurs precisely during the epidemic,” said the Venezuelan vice president, who accused the US government of having decided to tighten international sanctions against Caracas.
Delcy Rodriguez explained that 98% of domestic coronavirus cases are treated through the public health system, and stressed that “in the midst of the worst blockade, Venezuela was able to control the epidemic through a cooperation mechanism with Cuba.”
He stressed that Venezuela is “the Latin American country with the lowest mortality rate.”
The vice president also denounced that the International Monetary Fund did not include Venezuela in its recent financing programs.
“The only country that does not have SDRs in the IMF is Venezuela, which is suffering from a pandemic,” the governor said.
On July 8, the Global Access Fund for Covid-19 Vaccines (Covax) announced that it had received $120 million (€101.3 million) to deliver 11.3 million doses of vaccines to Venezuela.
This announcement came after Venezuela condemned, before the United Nations Human Rights Council, that the sanctions imposed by the United States prevent the arrival of vaccines against Covid-19, which affects the immunization program for its population.
On September 1, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) announced that more than 3.3 million Venezuelans had completed immunization against COVID-19, with two doses of Sinopharma and Sputnik and a Cuban slave vaccine.
The announcement was made by Enrique Pérez Gutierrez, Head of Health Emergency Information and Risk Assessment at the Pan American Health Organization, during a digital press conference, broadcast on Youtube.
“So far, the country has administered 9,342,817 doses (…) to 3,326,547 (persons), that is, 36% (of those vaccinated) completed the program with the second dose,” Perez-Gutierrez said.
Since March 2020, Venezuela has been under preventive quarantine and currently has a regime of seven days of easing, followed by seven days of strict confinement.
The country has recorded 4,072 deaths and 338,300 cases of the disease since the beginning of the epidemic, according to official data.
Covid-19 has caused at least 45,39397 deaths worldwide, among the more than 218.96 million new coronavirus infections recorded since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the latest report from Agence France-Presse.
In Portugal, since March 2020, 17,785 people have died and 1,045,857 confirmed cases of infection have been recorded, according to data from the Directorate General of Health.
The respiratory disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which was discovered in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, and currently with variants identified in countries such as the United Kingdom, India, South Africa, Brazil or Peru.
FPG // MSP
Lusa / end
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