SAN JOSE (Reuters) – Costa Rica has signed an agreement with pharmaceutical companies Pfizer Inc and its German partner BioNTech SE for the manufacture and delivery of 3 million COVID-19 vaccines next year, the office of President Carlos Alvarado said on Thursday.
Deliveries will be made throughout the four quarters of 2021, as established in an initial agreement announced on Oct. 1, the president’s office said in a statement.
The deal will allow Costa Rica to provide two doses to 1.5 million people and follows accords with AstraZeneca and the Covax mechanism backed by the World Health Organization. In total, the agreements should cover about 3 million people, or almost 60% of the Costa Rican population.
The Central American country has so far registered some 142,505 cases of coronavirus and 1,757 related deaths.
(Reporting by Alvaro Murillo; Editing by Leslie Adler)
