Irene Hartmann
02/19/2021 12:18 PM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 02/19/2021 12:18 PM
Since the start of the vaccination campaign against the coronavirus, just over a third of the doses that Argentina has received so far have been applied.
The reason for so many vials pending use is simple: the vaccination campaign began on December 29, but 55% of the doses - 980,000 units - arrived
in the last seven days
.
Although these figures arouse optimism, they are still
too far from the goal set
by the Minister of Health, Ginés González García, when this week he hoped that if the laboratories meet the stipulated schedules, by September all adults in the country will be able to be vaccinated.
It is not an easy task: from here to the end of September,
21 times more vaccines
should be given every day
than those that have been given since the end of December.
According to data from the Ministry of Health of the Nation, as of February 17, only
241,662 people received the complete vaccination scheme
against Covid, while 391,975 were vaccinated with the first dose.
Fulfilling the words of the Minister supposes having received, distributed and applied, throughout the country, some
60 million doses for
30 million people over 18 years of age
.
So far, Argentina has obtained
1,800,000 vials
, that is, 3% of what is required.
A woman is vaccinated against the coronavirus in Tucumán.
/ Communication Ministry of Health
The Government should be able to manage, in seven months, the
remaining 97%
.
If one - with the intention of
measuring
the viability of the proposal - is a retailer, there are
58,200,000 doses, which should be applied in 224 days.
Reaching that horizon would imply a major health deployment.
And in this case the numbers do not betray.
Because, instead of applying 12,200 doses per day, as, on average, it has been happening since December 29, it would be necessary to be able to inject
260,000 ampoules every day
.
Almost 22 times more
.
Is it possible, judging by the rate at which we are going in terms of vaccination?
How to make it flow better
Clarín
consulted various official sources of Health for
their views on the pace of the campaign, and the existence of possible obstacles.
The query that started from a question that was more shared than stated aloud:
What element or improvement could make the campaign flow a little more?
The general vision from the consulted jurisdictions is that
there is clearly a “bottleneck”
, but that it does not depend on national management, that is, on internal logistics, once the doses are in the country.
In other words, the parsimony of the campaign would exceed the national authorities.
For example
, Rossana Chahla,
Minister of Health of Tucumán, was satisfied and explained that her province
receives
3.4% of the vaccines that are arriving.
He enthusiastically calculated how many doses they would send him of the Indian version of the Oxford-AstraZeneca (Covishield) ones that arrived on Wednesday.
It should be 19,000.
Vaccination against Covid in River.
/ REUTERS / Matias Baglietto
“I don't see any obstacles in the distribution and I think the work was impeccable.
It is necessary to comply with many regulations and with certain traceability in terms of the
logic of cold
.
It is important to do things right.
In Tucumán everything arrived as it should have arrived.
Not one more vaccine, not one less ”, he evaluated.
Although he did not deny the famous "bottleneck", he even pointed out a certain advantage, due to the slowness: "Regarding the rhythm, one always wants to have more doses, but the staggered way of arrival of the doses
allowed us to learn
: how to handle multidose, the subject of freezing and thawing, the application, having the space to tell people about the adverse effects ... it allowed us to have the experience to improve all the logistics ”.
From the City of Buenos Aires, a spokesperson who spoke to this medium agreed with the general management of the immunization campaign, and explained that the bottleneck is a fact, in tune with the
excessive demand for vaccines worldwide.
He did not deny that “obviously the arrival of vaccines is slow”, but he was hopeful: “We tend to believe that
delivery will be regularized
in the coming days.
Already this week two large shipments arrived.
We hope it will be sustained ”.
Does the campaign hinder or delay a certain informational short-circuit that the provinces are subjected to when, for example, they do not know until the last minute how many doses they will receive from a shipment that is landing in the country?
In the City they denied that it represents an inconvenience, although they admitted that from Russia, the developers of the Sputnik vaccine did not offer enough information in this regard.
This problem would be "corrected" if the next vaccines, as expected, have the seal of other pharmaceutical companies.
"If the arrival of games flows, the campaign will flow as well," the spokesperson estimated.
More demand
For
Iris Aguilar
, head of the Department of Immunizations of Mendoza, the demand for vaccines is being very high, since "people who did not want to be vaccinated, now want, and that prolongs vaccination times."
But, he assured: “We are vaccinating twenty engines.
Depending on the doses we receive, we are applying, respecting the 21 days and strictly respecting vaccinating Health professionals before anything else.
Mendoza has not yet gone out to vaccinate other groups, since the staging defined by the Nation is respected ”.
With the "AutoVac" device, in Tucumán health personnel and older adults vaccinate without getting out of the car.
/ Communication Ministry of Health
Alina Almazán
, San Juan Public Health Planning Secretariat explained that they are not having any problems with transportation logistics: the vaccines arrive in 48 hours from Buenos Aires and go directly to the vaccination center.
Similarly, in the extreme south of the country, the Minister of Health of Tierra del Fuego,
Judith Digiglio
, agreed with the national logistics.
"We do not have any problem.
As soon as they arrive, we start the vaccination ”, he summarized.
“So far we have vaccinated
between 50% and 60% of the Health personnel.
Yesterday new doses of Sputnik arrived, which will help us to complete that segment, and we will also use some doses of Covishield.
The rest will be to start vaccination in those over 70 years of age.
We hope, as a nation, to have more vaccines, but it is a problem of access worldwide, "he said.
But Digiglio said something else.
"Yes we have been days without vaccination due to lack of dose at the national level," he clarified.
Against this "
start-stop, start-stop
" pointed out
Adolfo Rubinstein
, former Minister of Health of the Nation, doctor of Medicine and master's degree in Clinical Epidemiology.
“There is a vaccine supply problem, which is the most important bottleneck.
But the problem is that they announce in a grandiose way that the vaccination campaign begins and after two weeks the vaccines are finished.
Other countries, like Chile,
collected millions of doses before starting the campaign.
Here there is a lack of planning and a lack of protagonism of the Ministry of Health of the Nation ”.
For Rubinstein it would have made sense to delay the start of the campaign (accelerated by virtue of President Alberto Fernández's promise to apply the first vaccines before the end of 2020) for at least "a few weeks."
With more doses "up the sleeve",
resources would be better optimized
, he said: "The vaccination device is very complex: many oiled steps are required, the issue of transportation, storage ... there are many actors involved in the national strata , provincial and municipal. The measure of
starting, stopping and resuming
does not allow fluidity and good dynamics, and generates a lot of anxiety in people ".
The former minister admitted that "Argentina has structural problems in terms of the federal organization of the health system", so that
infinite doses could not be collected
whose conservation would be a problem.
But, critical of the current administration, he explained: "The minister lost his leading role. All the historical vaccination campaigns were carried out from the Nation. The campaign is very fragmented and other complications are added, especially in the province of Buenos Aires, where health structures are being replaced with other political ones ”.
Regarding having the adult population vaccinated by September, Rubinstein was very pessimistic: “It is not possible at the rate we are going.
There are 60 million doses.
It is something unprecedented ”.
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