Adriana santagati
07/08/2021 6:00 AM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 07/08/2021 9:32 AM
In the official parts in which the national government highlights the
acceleration of the
vaccination
campaign
against the coronavirus, which has already applied the first dose to more than half of those over 18 years of age, there is a fact that draws attention.
In the latest update, that of Monday, it is recorded that in the age group over 60
, vaccination coverage reaches 84.4%
.
Logically, these percentages are decreasing as the age of the population decreases: between 50 and 59 years, to 81.1%;
between 40 and 49 years old, 64.9%;
between 30 and 39 years old, 37.7%;
and between 18 and 29 years old, 17.2%.
But going back to the first number, it is still significant.
Those over 60 are the
main risk group
and were the first to be targeted by the campaign, starting with the +80s at the end of February.
Almost five months later, is still more than 15% of that population not vaccinated?
On Thursday, July 1, the Government released the monthly report for June on the progress of the vaccination campaign. There, more data is broken down and, in the range of more than 70, the coverage with the first dose is 86.8%. Taking those numbers, then, 14 out of every 100 Argentines who turned 70
would not be vaccinated
. What are the reasons why this percentage of the most vulnerable population has not been immunized?
That effective access to vaccines - now that vaccines are in the vaccinations - is a challenge at this point in the campaign is known.
The province of Buenos Aires itself opened the "free vaccination" last month for the prioritized groups to be immunized without a shift and a Kicillof management official acknowledged that there are people who choose whether or not to apply it according to the brand they are giving that day in the vaccination center.
But the main reasons behind this percentage of unvaccinated older adults must be found elsewhere.
And the answer seems to lie in another problem that Argentina usually suffers in many areas: the lack of data.
The census that was not
For 2020, the Census was scheduled, which the INDEC does every ten years.
The last edition was completed on a traumatic day: October 27, 2010, a Wednesday that the country woke up shocked by the death of former President Néstor Kirchner.
The
2021 Census
was to be held on Wednesday, October 28 of last year.
Due to the pandemic, it was suspended and, with the legislative elections in sight, everything seems to indicate that it will be held in 2022.
But not having up-to-date information on how many people of what age live in each jurisdiction of the country could be bringing an unexpected inconvenience to the vaccination campaign:
knowing how many Argentines are in each age group
.
In a meeting with journalists last Friday at the Ministry of Health, the Undersecretary of Health Strategies, Juan Manuel Castelli, spoke about the issue and estimated that to complete 100% of the calculated population over 80 years, 282,000 people would need to be vaccinated and for 70 -79, another 243,290.
However, when asked by this newspaper about how the inoculation of this group has evolved in recent months, Castelli admitted that
for six weeks the rate has not grown at +80
.
“At each meeting of the Federal Health Council we have spoken with the jurisdictions and they have voluntarily called for them to come without a turn. It works with the difficulties in registration from the point of view of the digital divide or also where there are linguistic gaps, as with native peoples. And follow-up strategies are made with territorial organizations in popular neighborhoods. But it is understood that when you voluntarily summon a percentage say 'I don't want to' ", he analyzed.
However, added the head of the Health Cabinet, Sonia Tarragona, they are reviewing with INDEC technicians the number of target population to be vaccinated - on which these percentages are then calculated - because it arises from population estimates based on vegetative growth. For example, it is not updated in real time how many of those half a million people who would miss vaccinated may have died in these months, since
there are still no digital death certificates
in the country
.
“
We do not know how many Argentines we are because our last data is from 10 years ago.
When we say 'We have reached 85% of vaccinated people' it is a projection. We do know how many we vaccinate, but we never know how many still need to be vaccinated because we don't know which ones do not want to be vaccinated, ”said Tarragona, who points out that migrations are not the same now as they were a decade ago and that all these variables add up.
In the City, they coincide with this scenario proposed by the Nation that the number of the target population is not specific but a projection and they note that since February 22, "84.3% of the projected population has been vaccinated." In the province, meanwhile, they calculate that 93% of the target population over 60 years of age have registered and that of these, 96.41% are already vaccinated with at least one dose. The official information from the jurisdictions does not discriminate by age subgroups within this large group.
Returning to the global numbers, in the Nation they emphasize that there is little left to reach
95%, which is the ideal coverage
in any vaccination campaign (beyond Covid) and that another number to look at is that the more the vaccinated population begins to see in the curves
the drop in mortality
.
And in this sense, they present the preliminary results of a broad
study of effectiveness
in people over 60 years of age from all the provinces, which was also presented last week.
The effectiveness for mortality with Sputnik is 74.9% with one dose and 93.3% with two;
for AstraZeneca, 79.5% and 88.8%;
and for Sinopharm, 61.6% and 84%.
At the same meeting on Friday, Minister Carla Vizzotti anticipated that the next stage of the vaccination campaign will be the
“extramural” operations
, as she called them, for which the ministry delivered conservatives and laptops to the jurisdictions.
The idea is to go directly to the field to look for people who, for one reason or another, are not getting vaccinated.
In the Province of Buenos Aires, which this week already enabled free vaccination for +45 throughout the territory and for +18 in 31 municipalities, they confirmed to this newspaper that they will soon implement this vaccination in the territory.
ACE
Look also
Two provinces applied 22,000 more vaccines than they received: how they achieved the "miracle"
The Province estimates that at the beginning of August all Buenos Aires residents over 18 will have the first dose of the vaccine