The President of Colombia, Ivan Duque, has stated that the country's food and drug regulator, the National Institute of Food and Drug Surveillance (Invima), authorised emergency use of Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE's COVID-19 vaccine on 5 January 2021, Reuters news agency reported on Wednesday.

Colombia now awaits approval for the COVID-19 vaccines produced by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson's pharmaceutical unit Janssen, Duque added.

Reportedly, patients aged 60 and over, or with co-morbidities such as asthma and diabetes, will be among the first in line for vaccines, along with health workers.

Colombia has agreed to buy 10 million doses each of the Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines, as well as nine million from Janssen. It has also secured 20 million vaccine doses via the World Health Organisation-backed COVAX mechanism.

According to Colombia's minister of health, the first delivery of 1.7 million Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses is expected in February 2021.

Colombia aims to vaccinate 35.7 million of its 50 million inhabitants.

So far, Colombia has reported 1.7 million COVID-19 infections and 44,426 deaths.