QCOSTARICA – The Defensora de los Habitantes (Ombudswoman), Catalina Crespo, affirmed this Thursday that 800,000 Costa Ricans do not want to be vaccinated against covid-19, without having a technical basis on that statement.
She said so after President Carlos Alvarado rejected a call to meet with an anti-vaccine group.
In a video released by the Defensora, both to the media and on social networks, Crespo stated: “The Defensoria’s Office wishes that the President of the Republic assumes the responsibilities inherent to his position and does not exclude or discriminate against the 800,000 Costa Ricans who they do not want to be vaccinated, since only through dialogue and human respect many of these people could change their position”.
When asked about the source of information, the Defensoria’s office responded: “This information is one of those not vaccinated so far; They are official data from the Ministry of Health.
However, the Ministry of Health has never said that 800,000 Costa Ricans refuse to get the vaccine. What the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS) has said is that there are about 750,000 people over the age of 12 who have not yet received their first dose, which does not mean that they reject the inoculation.
That is the same message delivered by President Alvarado on Wednesday during the press conference from Casa Presidencial in announcing the sanitary measures from October 16 to December 31 of this year.
At no time did the CCSS, nor President Alvarado, state that this group is entirely made up of movements against vaccination.
According to the latest statistics by the Caja published on October 11, 3,525,260 people have already received at least one dose, which is equivalent to 82.4% of the target population of 4,274,344, which is made up of people over 12 years of age.
Meanwhile, almost 2.4 million (2,395,829) people have the complete scheme, which is 56% of the target population or 46.4% of the total population.
An analysis by the Data de La Nación unit estimated that 80% of the total population would be vaccinated by the second half of January.
