Claudio Andrade
05/24/2021 13:04
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 05/24/2021 6:22 PM
While Argentina hopes that it will touch even a small fraction of the vaccines that the US president plans to send to the countries most in need, the government of Alberto Fernández
has rejected the items offered by Chile
also for free.
President Joe Biden announced that he plans to ship
20 million coronavirus vaccines abroad
to meet part of the international demand and said that for the first time he will transfer doses of the three approved brands in the United States:
Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.
The Argentine ambassador in Washington, Jorge Argüello, began negotiations in the White House, in the State Department and with various laboratories with the specific objective of convincing the US government that Argentina should receive as many of these vaccines as possible, as he could. know
Clarín
.
The situation with Chile is different.
Last March, Senator Carlos Bianchi proposed some
15,000 doses
to the Foreign Ministry
to be distributed from Puerto Natales (Magallanes) to Río Turbio.
The distance between the towns is 30 kilometers.
"In the offices of Foreign Minister Felipe Solá they never responded," he told
Clarín
Bianchi.
"We did our part, we know that it reached the Foreign Ministry and we did not know more," he added.
Now the Los Lagos Region acted in a similar way and the trans-Andean people assure that they will also try to contact Solá.
His intention is to donate vaccines to Bariloche for all Chilean residents.
It would be about
17 thousand people.
This is the second opportunity that a trans-Andean region makes this type of proposal to the country, but without obtaining
any signal
from the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Health led by Carla Vizzotti or the president himself Alberto Fernández.
In Río Turbio the authorities did not take the idea of the trans-Andean people enthusiastically either.
"It is an expression of wishes. It is a proposal made by a senator who must first request it from his country and
then see the possibilities,
" said Kirchner mayor Darío Menna.
The Argentine Foreign Minister, Felipe Solá.
Photo: EFE
Clarín
tried to contact Minister Vizzotti to consult her about it, although it was not possible.
"In the national government they do not want them for a
political cost
. And now the issue has cooled down. It would be good to talk again," Mirey Zeidán, a political figure of radicalism in Santa Cruz (now away from the party) and entrepreneur.
Zeidán was one of the people who kept in contact with Bianchi in order to advance the donation.
Legislator Bianchi had assured that they could supply some 15,000 vaccines to Río Turbio where thousands of Chileans worked in the coal deposit between the 70s and the late 90s.
The Regional Council of Los Lagos (CORE) has already contacted the mayor of the Region of the Lakes, Carlos Geisse.
The authority would have advanced with officials from the government of Sebastián Piñera and the Foreign Ministry, it was revealed.
The original initiative was from the Chilean Circle Gabriela Mistral of Bariloche.
According to the officials in Bariloche there are about 17 thousand Chileans settled who could access the vaccination.
In CORE they were concerned about the slowness in the vaccination process and the
high level of infections in the tourist city.
The CORE of Los Lagos supported the Piñera government for the donation "considering the large population of nationals in said territory and given the slowness of the inoculation process in the trans-Andean country," it was reported.
"We hope this is something positive and that the Argentine government also has the will to receive the vaccine that we are offering," said Manuel Rivera, a member of CORE, to biobiochile.cl.
"(It is a matter) the regional governments officiate the reality that compatriots live in the Patagonia of Argentina and that they require inoculation against the coronavirus," he added.
Legislator Bianchi made himself available to both governments in March and assures that the project reached the desk of Foreign Minister Solá.
However, it did not generate any significant diplomatic movement.
For now, vaccines
are still waiting in Chile.
“I understand that perhaps due to his political sign, President Fernández does not think the donation from Chile and the government of (Sebastián) Piñera is entirely good, but this is not a question of political signs.
If President Fernández has problems of that order with President Piñera, he must put them aside and approve the vaccines.
This is a matter of health and brotherhood, not of political signs, ”Bianchi said at that time in conversation with
Clarín
.
Bariloche. Correspondent
PS
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