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Argentina, country 'neither nor' of vaccines: it does not get enough doses and it is not a priority of the Covax solidarity fund

2021-03-12T09:58:25.026Z


With delays in the arrival of the doses it bought, Argentina is not among the first nations to receive those that PAHO is sending to Latin America.


Adriana santagati

03/12/2021 6:01 AM

  • Clarín.com

  • Society

Updated 03/12/2021 6:01 AM

This Thursday, the Government announced the arrival, next week, of three million of Sinopharm's Chinese vaccines, with which Argentina will round up a total of 7 million doses when those batches arrive.

That number is far from the 20 million doses to vaccinate the 10 million people that President Alberto Fernández expected to have immunized by this time of year, as he announced in December.

But those 7 million, at the same time,

put us in a paradoxical situation

: they postpone, for now, the distribution of vaccines that the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is doing.

Also this Thursday, the agency released a statement announcing that "the distribution of vaccines in the Americas is expanding."

In the text, he quotes its director, Carissa Etienne, who anticipated that "about 2.3 million doses of vaccines will reach at least seven countries in the region in the coming days and weeks through the COVAX Mechanism."

The COVAX Mechanism is a fund made up of the World Health Organization, the GAVI-Vaccines Alliance (a body created with the encouragement of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) and the Coalition for Preparedness in Epidemic Innovations.

It works as an intermediary between countries and the pharmaceutical industry.

The states made financial contributions

to finance the development of vaccines

and then receive doses based on what they contributed.

COVAX also has a purpose of equity because it allows to guarantee vaccines to countries that are

in worse conditions to negotiate

on their own the purchase with the laboratories.

On its website, COVAX explains that the approved vaccines will

be distributed equitably

among all participating countries "at the same rate proportional to the size of their population."

No country was able to reserve vaccines for

more than 20% of its population

, but those who wanted it (because they closed deals on their own) could buy less.

Argentina made use of this maximum quota and by contract reserved 9 million doses, which it expected to receive between February and July, according to the Ministry of Health in mid-January. 

In an update of its forecasts, 10 days ago COVAX anticipated that the doses that Argentina will receive until May will be 1.9 million.

However, while the distribution advances in the continent,

there are

still

no details of when the COVAX vaccines will arrive in Argentina

.

The first vaccines

were delivered in Latin America on March 1

, as part of what PAHO called "First Wave," a pilot program that pre-awarded a limited number of Pfizer vaccines.

There were 117,000 doses that Colombia received.

Now, the delivery to Peru of its first doses of Pfizer has been announced, and "in the coming days and weeks," Etienne said, vaccines will arrive in Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica and Nicaragua.

In addition, the Bahamas received 20,000 doses of Covishield thanks to a donation from the Indian Government.

Vaccination in Peru, where the landing of the Covax fund is imminent.

Photo: Bloomberg

And Argentina?

For now, it is not mentioned, nor is Chile - the model country of the region in its vaccination strategy - nor Brazil - with uncontrolled infections and a record of deaths.

Although COVAX did not specify the modality of distribution of the doses, when analyzing the vaccination rates published by the One World in Data site, it can be inferred that PAHO is prioritizing to deliver the first doses to the countries that are

lagging the most in percentage of its vaccinated population

.

In Peru, 1.29% of the population was vaccinated.

Bolivia immunized 1.09%, Colombia 0.71%, followed by El Salvador (0.25%), Guatemala (0.01%) and Honduras (0.03%).

Of the rest, there is no data.  

In Brazil, even with the critical situation, 5.53% of its population was vaccinated.

Chile deserves a separate chapter, a pioneer in Latin America with 29.93% of its population immunized.

Chileans closed early agreements and

secured more doses than their total population

(36 million for 20 million people), which allowed them, in the face of the production delay of all pharmaceutical companies, to have a larger basket of vaccines.

Argentina fell prey to the Gamaleya production delays, which still delayed indefinitely - although at the time there was talk of three weeks - the arrival of the total of 20 million doses that our country contractually expected to receive by February.

AstraZeneca, the other major supplier, had already anticipated it would begin deliveries in the fall, and 580,000 doses of Covishield-brand Indian production arrived in February.

Now, the Government is moving forward with shipments of Sinopharm, a vaccine that is not yet authorized for those over 60 years of age, precisely the one that was the target population to be vaccinated before the first colds.

But despite this scenario that is well known to all, there are other countries in the region with greater urgency depending on the vaccinated population.

And there the paradox.

Neither the best students nor the worst in the class, we are still waiting for vaccines, on one side and the other.

The "neither nor" of vaccines.

AS


Look also

Sputnik vs.

Sinopharm: how the Russian vaccine went from rejection to desire in Argentina and doubts about the Chinese one

The Government affirms that next week three million doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine will arrive

Source: clarin

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