On the night of March 19, 2020, when the
Covid pandemic
was stirring
With his first scythes, President Alberto Fernández announced on a national channel the entry of Argentina into Preventive and Mandatory Social Isolation (ASPO),
a quarantine
that would ultimately become one of the most extensive in the world.
They were times of
consensus
.
Both Fernández and the governors of the two main districts of the country, Axel Kicillof and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, showed unity to face the threat of an unknown enemy, which had been wreaking havoc from Europe, especially in Italy and Spain.
The effort of the locked-up population caused the curve of deaths from Covid
to grow more slowly
that year.
The contrast came from 2021, when it was expected that the vaccines already available on the market would supply the network that was run from the waning social isolation.
A brand new official report reveals
to what extent the
management of vaccines
had an impact on this aspect.
This is the document
"Excess mortality in Argentina, years 2020-2021"
, prepared by the National Ministry of Health.
A comparative analysis between mortality in
one year and another
, and the comparison of the same index with that of other countries of the continent, allows drawing some conclusions.
In 2020, excess mortality in Argentina was
10.2 percent
, only optimized by two countries: Uruguay and Paraguay.
In 2021, on the other hand, when the vaccines were already available,
Chile and the United States
joined the Uruguayans to achieve better indicators than Argentina.
The data also show that while in 2020 Chile and the United States had excess mortality of
12.9 and 15.3 percent
respectively, in 2021 these indicators became
21.5 and 17.8
.
The excess mortality in our country, on the other hand, was
26.3 percent
in 2021 , 16.1 percentage points more than the previous year.
As background information, it should be remembered that Chile and the United States were two of the first countries to apply
messenger RNA vaccines
, the new platform that would prove to be the most effective among those approved.
Argentina delayed the acquisition of these vaccines, also taken advantage of prematurely by Uruguay.
In May 2021, the
peak of excess mortality in Argentina
occurred : 70 percent more than that predicted for a normal May.
Two months later, the Government announced the purchase of 20 million doses from the Pfizer laboratory.
When that happened,
eight countries
in the region had already signed their contracts.
The first half of 2021 was marked by a
global
vaccine shortage .
In Argentina, in particular, the delay in the delivery of the AstraZeneca doses was combined with the lack of second components of Sputnik V. To this was added the lower efficacy of the Sinopharm vaccine and the procrastination of the Government to further
diversify
your suppliers.
Starting from the peak in May 2021, excess mortality
fell steadily
.
If you look at the daily immunization curve in the Public Vaccination Monitor, that is precisely the
turning point
at which Argentina makes a leap in the number of doses applied.
From the final average, which evaluates the management of both years, it appears that Argentina ends worse in excess deaths than
Uruguay, Chile and the United States
.
What had been achieved with the initial effort of the population during the quarantine could not be sustained by the performance of the state management, whose result was more unstable or weak than in those other countries.
That deficit, in 2021, made the excess deaths in Argentina with respect to a standard year (without a pandemic) to be
89,901
.
That is,
55,034 more deaths
than the excess that had already been registered in 2020, when the Covid abyss was crossed in the dark, without vaccines and the ASPO prevailed.
This figure also represents
16,407
more deaths than if in 2021 the Chilean performance had been matched;
32,815
more than if the Uruguayan had matched;
or
29,055
more than the US management index.
Balance of the 2020-21 biennium
In summary, Argentina had better indicators in the biennium than Brazil, Paraguay, Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.
In 2020, it avoided excess deaths to a greater extent than almost all the others, but it was the
fifth nation in the region
that suffered the most from the increase in that excess from one year to the next,
Thus, Argentina, with
16.1 extra percentage points
in 2021, ranked after Brazil (20.2 extra points), Colombia (22.9 extra points), Uruguay (23.3 extra points) and Paraguay ( 47.4 extra points).
The
only country that reduced
the excess deaths in 2021 compared to 2020 was Ecuador.
When specifically analyzing what happened in 2021 in Argentina, the official report describes: "The greatest excess mortality was observed in the first semester (40.5 percent), while in the second semester the excess was 9.3 percent." ”.
And to explain it, he concludes briefly: "This coincides with
the dynamics of the pandemic
in the country."
Since the start of the pandemic, Argentina has so far had
130,473 deaths
from Covid.
After the series of missteps that occurred during the first half of 2021, the Government managed to consolidate a broader and more effective portfolio of vaccines, which allowed coverage of almost the entire population with at least two doses in the following months.
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