Delcy Rodriguez said that the Venezuelan government managed to pay the doses to the international mechanism with resources from the State in the world bank. | Photo: Twitter 

Caracas, September 4 (RHC)-- Venezuela denounced that it has not received any vaccine for COVID-19 under the international mechanism created by the World Health Organization (WHO), known as COVAX, despite having made the corresponding payments.

Executive Vice President Delcy Rodriguez assured that "COVAX has distributed more than 236 million doses to countries around the world and despite the fact that Venezuela paid 120 million dollars, it has not received a single dose to date."

In a speech during the Teacher Training Course "Latin America at the Crossroads." Rodriguez recalled the damage done to Venezuela by the unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States.

"The worst intensification of the blockade against Venezuela occurred precisely during the pandemic," said the Executive Vice President.  Delcy Rodriguez indicated that the Venezuelan government managed to pay for the doses to the international mechanism with resources of the State.

"It is what is called the second level sanctions.  We managed to disencumber our resources in the World Bank and we paid with great sacrifice 120 million to the Covax mechanism, which was supposed to be the solidarity mechanism," she explained.

At the beginning of last month, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) announced that as from August 4, Venezuela would start receiving 3.2 million COVAX vaccines, of which 2.6 million corresponded to doses from Sinopharm and 600 thousand from Sinovac.

Venezuela cancelled Covax for the acquisition of 11,374,400 doses, to immunize 20 percent of its population.  In April 2021, WHO, the European Commission and France launched a global collaborative initiative to accelerate the development of treatments, tests and vaccines against Covid-19. 

The COVAX platform is co-led by the Gavi Vaccine Alliance (Gavi), the Coalition for the Promotion of Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and WHO to ensure equitable distribution of the antigen worldwide.