11/07/2020 10:31 PM
Clarín.com
Opinion
Updated 11/07/2020 10:31 PM
Alberto Fernández has had to make a tactical move in the management of his government.
In this case, he is accompanied by Cristina Fernández.
A whole novelty.
He decided to look back at the pandemic as a public center of gravity.
He returned to the photo with Schedule Rodríguez Larreta, the head of the City, and Axel Kicillof, before communicating a relaxation of the quarantine in the AMBA.
He does not seek to regain a popularity that he had at the beginning of confinement and has already escaped him.
Only
recreate expectations in society
that neither the economy nor politics are capable of stimulating.
The health strategy in Argentina had
poor results
.
It could be computed as a favorable balance that the system avoided the collapse.
But the second wave that is taking place in Europe anticipates a threat when the summer passes here.
It will simultaneously be the beginning of a key electoral time.
The President's gamble now focuses on
the promise of another miracle
.
The supposed appearance of a saving vaccine that, for the second time in just two months, was announced in a bombastic way.
The solution would come from Russia.
The first communication happened in the second half of August.
He mentioned the agreement between a British-Swedish laboratory (AstraZeneca) with another Argentine and Mexican for the manufacture of a vaccine against Covid.
The financing would be provided by the Aztec magnate Carlos Slim.
The purchase of 11 million doses was anticipated, which, according to the Minister of Health, Ginés González García, would be applied free of charge.
With an estimated cost to the State between 3 and 4 dollars per application.
The chance of other certainties was
diluted in a cloud of smoke
.
The same seems to be happening now with the Russian trial.
When Alberto announced at a press conference the manufacture of the Oxford vaccine, Argentina was beginning to
enter a cone of shadow and abandoned its initial triumphalism
.
In June the first thousand victims had been registered.
At the time of that novelty, it exceeded eight thousand.
With an also shocking climb of contagions.
That episode had a peculiarity.
It was sponsored by Alberto in partnership with the Mexican president Manuel López Obrador, partner in the Puebla Group.
Local logistics promised to be provided by businessman Hugo Sigman, an old acquaintance of the Minister of Health.
The vice president was a distrustful spectator
of all that.
A doctor in a Russian hospital receives the "Sputnik-V" vaccine, during the phase 3 experimentation. Photo: Reuters
The roles have been reversed.
Cristina, together with Axel Kicillof, took the initiative in the negotiation with Moscow.
Alberto and Ginés
joined in once the doors of the Kremlin were opened
.
The process was fraught with oddities and opacities.
A secret mission was sent, led by the Deputy Minister of Health, Carla Vizzotti.
She was accompanied by the presidential advisor Cecilia Nicolini and Raquel Méndez, from Buenos Aires, wife of the Buenos Aires Minister of Health Daniel Gollán.
Public opinion learned of the efforts from a journalistic disclosure.
Alberto later made the announcement in statements to a Soviet news agency.
No press conference.
He spoke of the purchase of 25 million doses.
Half could be here in December to start vaccination.
Moscow plans to start vaccinating at the end of January.
Rare
.
No one explained whether the local health system would be in a position to collect them under the exceptional conditions that it demands.
According to the advisor Nicolini, it would be at a cost of $ 20 per vaccine.
It was not clear if for each application.
The Russian vaccine requires two applications within 28 days.
It could be $ 40, then.
Far from the 3 or 4 calculated by the Oxford
.
In any case, the State would take over.
Vizzotti argued that the application would be mandatory.
It was dismissed.
Gollan spoke of voluntary decision.
Another detail.
Cambiemos warned that, according to the law passed last week in Congress, the National Administration of Drugs, Food and Medical Technology (ANMAT) would have only 30 days to verify the safety of the Russian vaccine.
What would be the problem?
The former Minister of Health, Adolfo Rubinstein explained: “Any medicine that comes from the European Union or the United States is prequalified by that body.
But
neither Russia nor China are prequalified
.
The 30 days seem like a meager time ”.
The venture would have other strange points.
The laboratory that acted as an intermediary with Russia is HLB Pharma, based in San Isidro.
Its shareholders include former directors of the Apolo laboratory in Rosario, where in 2016
an explosion
occurred
that left several injured
.
Three of those were charged, but the trial was suspended.
Alberto would have asked Vladimir Putin, to avoid the scandal, that the negotiation for the vaccine be done only between the States.
Also in this case, as happened in August, the context cannot be omitted.
Of those 8 thousand dead, more than 33 thousand died.
Less than two and a half months passed.
Argentina is
among the 10 countries with the highest mortality rate per million inhabitants in the world
.
Walk towards the million 300 thousand people affected by the virus.
The description of those chapters would show improvisation and lack of transparency on the part of the Government.
Perhaps Alberto tried to mask them by trying to stir up a controversy impossible to be installed on the public scene.
He denounced an attempt to ideologize the purchase of the vaccine from Russia.
As if the world remained in the time of the Cold War.
Fantasies
.
No opposition leader referred to this alleged prejudice.
Except for infectologists who clamor to abstract any vaccine (Russian, Oxford or American) from geopolitical temptation.
The questions arise on the other hand.
Putin announced on August 11, surprisingly, that Russia had approved the vaccine against Covid.
The project was financed by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and experienced at the prestigious Gamaleya Center.
Some details of phase 1 and 2 were released a long time later and published by the international medical journal The Lancet.
The tests were reported to have a strong immune response in 76 volunteers.
Almost nothing is known about phase 3
which, according to experts, is crucial to verify the safety and efficacy of that medicine.
None of the other vaccines in progress have completed this stage.
But many details are known.
That is the heart of the matter, not the ideology
.
The decoupling of the Government, in the management and communication of the decisions to face the pandemic that is hitting, seem the true powerhouses of the doubts that are sown.
For example, why was the agreement with AstraZeneca moved forward if by that time Russia had already announced the existence of its vaccine?
Did the turn of the last week respond to some legal misunderstanding with the mAbxience laboratory, of the businessman Sigman?
Or did certain intrigues within the government also influence?
The vice president never hides her hatred against Sigman and Ginés.
Both linked to a Peronist governor who always gets close to the President.
Juan Manzur from Tucumán, Cristina's former Minister of Health until 2015.
The disagreements represent a double-edged sword for the Government.
He sparks popular expectation with advertisements for lifesaving vaccines
.
But it is installing a climate of suspicion in society that, when the time comes, could undermine the effectiveness of any vaccination program to combat the coronavirus.
A recent online survey by the OPINAIA consultancy reflects this.
Almost 40% of those consulted maintain that no vaccine would be applied.
Looking from another angle, the University of Belgrano concluded in a study that only 38% would accept to be vaccinated.
The lack of trust, in fact, is a stumbling block that the Government faces in almost all areas.
It certainly responds to the conflicting positions that cross the Front of All.
For example, the discussions still underground about measures to come.
Would it be reasonable in the summer season to open the borders with Brazil (which had a ferocious pandemic) and with Uruguay (one of the countries that best controlled it)?
It is true that Argentina requires the entry of dollars.
But wouldn't that be dangerous audacity?
The questions loom inexhaustible: will Argentina reinforce health controls at those borders?
How will do?
The passengers of the few flights that now arrive in Ezeiza enter without difficulties
.
Uruguay announced that, for now, it does not open its borders for the summer season.
It will represent a loss of US $ 600 million for their coffers.
Very much.
President Luis Lacalle Pou is planning a campaign to dissuade his citizens from traveling to Argentina, where the devaluation of the peso facilitates purchases.
The president also tries to clear any mistrust.
His government does not swing between one vaccine or another.
It started the procedures for the purchase of 1.5 million doses in advance at the World Health Organization (WHO).
Avoid negotiating with each lab
.
It will have preference in choosing the best validated vaccine.
Alberto adds confusion.
He claimed to possess the doses of the Russian vaccine.
They are not applied in order not to be privileged.
You should rethink it because this is the most important person in the country.
Unless that explanation is an excuse not to take risks.
In other fields it also smears it.
Recently, due to the intrusion of a field belonging to the Etchevehere family in Entre Ríos, he assured that inheritance problems "are something for the rich."
Last week he repeated the same music applied to insecurity.
He proclaimed that the rich do not suffer it because they live in important houses, with cameras, in gated communities and neighborhoods, they walk with custody and in armored cars.
Many thought, maliciously, that he was referring to Cristina.
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