On Mar. 1, 2021, Colombia became the first country in the Americas to receive COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX Facility, marking an historic step toward the goal of ensuring equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in the region and worldwide.

The delivery is part of the “First Wave” initiative, a global pilot program in which some countries receive early delivery of a limited number of doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine as part of their total allotted quota. More doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines are expected to arrive in coming weeks in the 36 countries participating in the mechanism in the region.

The 117,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that arrived at El Dorado International Airport in Bogota, the nation’s capital, mark the beginning of the deployment of COVAX-procured vaccines in Latin America and come about one year after the first case was detected in the region.