Pablo Sigal
07/30/2021 3:37 PM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 07/30/2021 3:37 PM
The sheet is short and the Delta variant lurks.
Three and a half million
doses for adolescents
, for now, make up the stock that Argentina currently has.
They are from the Moderna laboratory, donated by the United States.
The priority is already
920 thousand
adolescents with comorbidities, but in Argentina there are
3.8 million
adolescents between 12 and 17 years old, the target for which this vaccine is approved.
The government's idea is not to wait too long to immunize them.
Of the total US donation,
1,840,000 doses
have already been reserved for minors of those ages with some underlying disease.
Next week they will be the first minors in Argentina to receive an injection against Covid.
The Government distributed in the provinces half of these necessary vaccines, that is, only the first doses.
The second doses are untouchable.
And the remaining balance - the complement of those urgent schemes is removed - is almost
1.7 million doses
.
The question that had arisen in recent days was what was going to be done with that stock.
Some experts slipped the possibility that
Sputnik
be used as a
second dose
, although Moderna's will only now be included in the vaccine combination trials that the City is carrying out.
The distribution of the vaccines in the provinces began on Wednesday.
Photo: Presidency
Roberto Debbag, president of the Latin American Society of Pediatric Infectology, explained to
Clarín
: "The antecedent is with the vector AstraZeneca. But in an emergency like ours with the second dose of Sputnik you could go for messenger RNA, like that of Modern "
Clarín was
able to confirm, however, that the government's plan is to continue vaccinating adolescents
without comorbidities
.
For each year there are about 585 thousand young people between those ages, but if those with comorbidities are subtracted, 480 thousand remain.
In other words, with
1.7 million doses
, complete regimens could be applied to almost all adolescents between 16 and 17 years of age, or half a regimen (first doses) between 14 and 17 years old.
That half scheme, of course, would be waiting for the entry of new batches of vaccines from Moderna or, even earlier, from Pfizer.
As announced, the latter would arrive in the country before the end of the year.
The Government has contracts with both laboratories for a total of
40 million doses
.
The decision to continue vaccinating children without comorbidities, although it was not yet officially informed,
was communicated
by Minister Carla Vizzotti in a meeting with experts from the Argentine Society of Pediatrics (SAP) last Wednesday, before announcing that a part of these vaccines would already be used to vaccinate minors with risk factors.
Arrival of Moderna doses to the province of Mendoza.
Photo: Los Andes
The fact of immediately expanding vaccination in all adolescents also coincides with the fact that, unlike what happens in the City, several provinces have already enabled
free registration
to vaccinate them -always between 12 and 17 years old- beyond who do not have comorbidities.
The official objective would be to reduce the power of the
"supercontagators"
, and even more so in times when the Delta variant will begin to circulate in the community, much more transmissible and, according to the latest known data in the United States, also more aggressive.
These adolescents are precisely the population with
great social mobility
, many of them asymptomatic and with a great capacity to transmit the virus to vulnerable people.
What will happen then with the peremptory
second doses
that are in short supply for older adults? There would also be a story that would close the circle to explain why Moderna's vaccines would not be used for that purpose. Sources with access to the vaccine combination trials told
Clarín
that the results of that experiment, although not yet conclusive,
"are working well
.
"
If it is confirmed that the AstraZeneca and Sinopharm vaccines can be used as second doses of Sputnik, the Government would finally have paved the way to allocate
messenger RNA
to minors, since they are
the only ones authorized
in the West for that range of age.
Only in China, Sinovac and Sinopharm are authorized for use in minors 3 to 17 years of age.
In addition, it is estimated that in the next few days the first batches of the
Cansino vaccine will
arrive in the country
, which is the most similar to the second component of Sputnik V, because it is made on the basis of adenovirus 5.
That vaccine, also of Chinese origin, would be incorporated into the combination trial when it becomes available.
Although it is estimated that if the results with AstraZeneca and Sinopharm are positive -as everything would indicate-, the chance that this will happen with Cansino would be even higher.
$
Look also
Sputnik V, "stranded": it has been without approval in Europe for five months and the WHO does not authorize it
The WHO assures that the Delta strain is not more lethal than the other variants of the coronavirus