Mass vaccination campaign kicked off in Bolivia

"We want to save the lives of people who are at risk. With this vaccine, we give greater security not only to them, but also to their families who are wary of what may happen, who are the ones who suffer," Bolivian President Luis Arce said during a public ceremony at the Chuquiago Marka fairgrounds in the city of La Paz, where kidney and cancer patients were immunized.

The South American nation on Thursday launched the largest immunization campaign in its history in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, inoculating high-risk groups with Sinopharm vaccines.

The "doses of hope" have generated high expectations that the campaign will be able to bring the pandemic under control as the novel coronavirus is spreading to different parts of the country, which has registered 249,010 COVID-19 cases and 11,649 deaths from the disease.

MAH/XNA