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Almost 6 million vaccines not applied and provinces without stock: there is debate about the distribution

2021-08-17T10:06:10.168Z


While some districts are up to date and could apply more doses, others save up to nearly 40 percent of those they received. The expert's opinion.


Maria Bethlehem Etchenique

08/17/2021 6:02 AM

  • Clarín.com

  • Society

Updated 08/17/2021 6:02 AM

In Argentina

there are almost six million doses distributed without applying

.

The figures come from the Public Vaccination Monitor against Covid and also show that depending on whether you live in one province or another

, access to immunization is uneven. 

While some districts receive doses and apply them until they almost run out of stock.

In others,

the vaccines are reserved in warehouses

and take time to reach the population.

Translated: they are but they are not used immediately.

That sometimes happens due to

ineffective logistics

and other times due to the

resistance of some sectors

to being inoculated against the coronavirus.

Faced with this gap in immunity, several questions arise:

Should the method of distribution of vaccines be changed?

Does it make sense to continue sending doses to a province that has a reserve?

Do you need to prioritize districts with no carryover?

Since the beginning of the national immunization plan, the criterion applied to distribute the doses is the number of the population.

In other words, doses are sent in proportion to the number of people who live in each province: more inhabitants, more doses;

fewer inhabitants, fewer doses.

How many infections and deaths due to Covid-19 a jurisdiction has or how many elderly or ill people it has have no influence on the amount to be received.

The application of the doses depends on the provinces.

The national government distributes them and then each district takes care of emptying the vials with the vaccine into syringes that they inject into their inhabitants, according to the order of priority established by the Ministry of Health of the Nation.

They then register the immunized people in the system.

Until 17:00 on Monday, August 16, 13.87% of the vaccines distributed in Argentina had not been applied. There are a total of 5,934,822 doses. Seen in percentage,

Misiones is the district with the largest gap

between what it owns and what it applied to the population:

the

gap

is 35.8%

(a total of 421,665 doses). It is followed by Salta, with 27.7% (a total of 368,475); Chaco, with 27.5% (310,446); Santa Cruz, with 22.9% (80,000); Corrientes, with 21.1% (220,348); and Chubut, with 21% (120,359).

Meanwhile, other districts are almost up to date. According to the monitor, the City of Buenos Aires and La Pampa are the parts of the country where there is almost no difference between reception and application.

The percentage for Capital is 0.1%

(a total of 2,763).

In La Pampa, the proportion is negative: -2.1%

(a total of -7,154). In that case, according to public administration sources, the vaccination would go faster than the data load, which would explain why it appears that the number of doses applied is higher than those that were distributed.

Some experts have qualms about the distribution method.

"The

first mistake

was to distribute the vaccines by number of population and not to do so by target population, that is, older adults and with comorbidities, who have a

higher risk

of becoming

infected or dying

from the Covid infection," says Arnaldo Casiró, head of the Service of Infectology of the Hospital de Agudos Álvarez.

In the City of Buenos Aires, for every 100 people, 21.7 are older adults.

The district has an older than average population pyramid.

Photo Luciano Thieberger

Now that the majority of the population over 60 years old was or is being inoculated with the two doses - although still, by the distribution method determined by the Nation and due to the shortage of vaccines, in the City there are adults over 50 who are within the risk group and did not receive their second dose of Sputnik-, Casiró considers that

the methodology should

also

be

reversed

.

"The objective of vaccination has to be dynamic. It is a priority to 

identify in which places it is needed

, as urgently as possible, to have the population vaccinated with two doses," he says and continues: "The distribution criterion cannot be governed by a number fixed. It is illogical that there are districts that

could be vaccinating and do not do so due to lack of doses and that there are others that have and do not vaccinate

. "

"In addition to what happens in each province, that the country has millions of doses not applied is inappropriate at a time when

vaccination is the silver bullet to mitigate the pandemic,

" says the infectologist and head of the Department of Medicine from the Children's Hospital, Eduardo López.

In Buenos Aires it remains to apply 2,653,537 doses.

There is a 16% gap between the doses distributed and those already used to immunize against the coronavirus.

Photo Guillermo Rodríguez Adami

"In Buenos Aires, vaccinations have to get closer to the people," he adds.

There cannot be more than 2.5 million people waiting.

People want to be vaccinated, they are waiting for vaccines.

We must increase the number of places, facilitate schedules and in some localities go to the neighborhoods

, especially with a vaccine that is so easy to apply. "

In that sense, he points out that in the United Kingdom the vaccinations worked until midnight, so that people could attend after work.

In Buenos Aires, on the other hand, “official data show a

drop in the number of doses applied on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays

.

Obviously they work fewer hours or give fewer doses on those days, which are the ones that people have the most availability ”.

For López, it is necessary to

generate changes in the distribution strategy

, not so much because of the dissimilar reality of each district, but for another reason.


Arrival of vaccines at Ezeiza Airport.

Photo Marcelo Carroll

“The big problem with the distribution of doses is that they did it by number of inhabitants and not by target population.

If you want to start with older adults, you have to measure how many there are and not distribute according to the proportion of inhabitants.

That they have done so greatly delayed vaccination

, both for the first and second doses, in the districts that have more older adults ”.

Misiones, the province with the biggest gap

POSADAS.- From Misiones Public Health, they explain that vaccination slowed down due to

lower demand

.

On the one hand, they affirm, there are groups that, although they are not anti-vaccines, refuse to be immunized against the coronavirus;

and on the other, some sectors belonging to

religious congregations

 discourage vaccination.

According to the INDEC projection, almost 40% of the population of Misiones is under 18 years of age.

And the initial goal was to reach 803,000 adults.

Of that total, 536,900 people had already been inoculated with the first dose as of Friday and 203,880 had completed the scheme.

As in the Province of Buenos Aires, people can go to get vaccinated in Misiones

any day of the week and without a previous shift

.

In the Mesopotamian province, mobile vaccinations were also added and immunization centers were set up in many neighborhoods, but attendance has not increased.

Another of the arguments given by the province indicates that there is a huge

rural population that does not seek the vaccine either

because it considers that it is not at risk of being infected.

They collaborated: Rocío Magnani and Ernesto Azarkevich (correspondent in Misiones).

MG

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Source: clarin

All life articles on 2021-08-17

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