Panama approved a plan on Wednesday to vaccinate visitors in a bid to boost a tourism industry badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic, becoming the first Central American nation to offer vaccine doses to tourists.

Many of Panama's neighbours have struggled to vaccinate large numbers of their populations.

Latin America has been among the regions worst-hit by the pandemic, both in terms of deaths and in economic damage. Panama initially lagged peers in its vaccination drive, but is now among the regional leaders with 56% of its population fully vaccinated. That’s a higher proportion than the U.S. and Japan, and far higher than most Latin American nations. 

Unlike most countries in the region, which raced to source shots wherever they could, Panama put most of its eggs in the basket of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine.