QCOSTARICA – All who are vaccinated against covid-19 starting in the coming months will receive a card with a record of the vaccination.
The Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS) – Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS) – is preparing the document for 2.5 million people, although three million will be vaccinated.
Leandra Abarca Gómez, responsible for the Expanded Program of Immunizations (PAI) at the CCSS, pointed out that this card will allow insured persons to have a faithful record of the day they received the dose and the name of the pharmaceutical company that manufactured the vaccine they received.
“The effectiveness of the vaccine against covid-19 depends on the placement of the two doses that compose it. The doses must be 21 to 28 days apart and must be from the same manufacturer. For this reason, the vaccination card is an optimal source of information for the insured who receive the vaccine, for their caregivers in the case of older adults and for health personnel,” she explained.
The card that the CCSS will distribute on the day against covid-19 vaccination also includes a record of the vaccines that adults must have up to date as part of their vaccination schedule: diphtheria and tetanus, hepatitis B, seasonal influenza, and 23-valent pneumococcus.
Although people will be given the card for their record-keeping, CCSS vaccinators will use a computer system to verify the data of the person who received the covid-19 vaccine, the date and place, and the manufacturer..
According to Costa Rican regulations, the vaccination card is mandatory, both in public and private establishments.
Each card must contain the following information: full name of the vaccinated person, identification number, age, address, type of vaccine, date of application of each vaccine and applied dose and subsequent doses, as well as a stamp of the institution responsible for the vaccination or, where appropriate, the name of the professional who applies it and the professional code in order to give validity.
Costa Rica acquired six million doses of vaccines against covid-19: three million with Pfizer and BioNTech (for 1.5 million people), one million doses from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford for 500,000 people and two million doses for one million people with the COVAX initiative (details of the vaccine that would reach Costa Rican soil are not yet available).
Vaccination will begin in the first quarter of 2021, with no dates yet being specified.
According to the guidelines of the National Commission of Vaccines and Epidemiology, the first to receive these injections will be health workers, residents of nursing homes and those who work there, Firefighters, Red Cross personnel and police officials such as Fuerza Publica (national police)Traffic, Immigration, penitentiary, municipal and the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ).
