12/27/2020 3:24 PM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 12/27/2020 3:48 PM
President Alberto Fernández affirmed this Sunday that Argentina is part of the group of
"less than 10 countries around the world"
that will begin to vaccinate against the coronavirus before the end of the year, in what he classified as an achievement in a context in which that the central countries "hoarded" the doses for them.
In fact, there are already 33 nations that are vaccinating against Covid-19.
"I think there are less than 10 (countries) in the world, that is why what we have achieved is so important," the President responded to a question about which nations are initiating the vaccination plan.
And he assured that this figure emerged after a talk with the Minister of Health: “We did the numbers with Ginés and there are less than 10 in the whole world.
What we have achieved was very important and what is coming is very difficult due to the great demand for the vaccine since production is delayed ”.
Actually, there are several more countries that are already vaccinating.
China
was the one that started and
Russia
followed.
United Kingdom
,
United States
,
Canada
,
Switzerland
,
Serbia
,
United Arab Emirates
,
Saudi Arabia
,
Bahrain
,
Israel
,
Qatar
,
Kuwait
,
Oman
,
Mexico
,
Chile
,
Costa Rica
,
Germany
,
Hungary
,
Slovakia
,
Czech Republic
,
Italy
,
Sweden
,
France
,
Portugal
,
Spain
,
Denmark
,
Romania
,
Poland
,
Norway
,
Greece
,
Austria
and
Cyprus
also started applying doses.
The transfer of the Sputnik V vaccine in the country, to begin on Tuesday with the vaccination.
Photo Rolando Andrade Stracuzzi.
In dialogue with
Radio 10
, the president also asked to be "cautious" and not
"get carried away by a war at times geopolitical and at times commercial"
around the origin of the vaccine and warned: "Behind the sale of vaccines there is a Tens of billions of dollars market, we have to understand that. "
"It must be taken into account that the laboratories that have carried out the research to have the vaccine are world-renowned laboratories, of the first level, and
this cannot be questioned,
" he clarified.
In that sense, he marked his "eternal" gratitude to Russia for having provided doses to the country and insisted that the central world "monopolized the vaccines" and "the countries of the periphery are searching with concern" to access them.
In this regard, he assured that his Government will collaborate with Bolivia and Uruguay so that they can obtain their doses in a context in which developed countries "concentrated all purchases."
And he affirmed that he has already communicated with the Bolivian president, Luis Arce, and with the Uruguayan Foreign Minister, Francisco Bustillo, to "help them get the vaccine."
"Everything we can do to help we will do it, to them and to those who ask us," stressed the President, who accepted that
"what is coming is difficult"
for issues that have to do with "delays in production" and with the massive purchases made by the central countries.
In that sense, he confirmed that
the vaccination plan will begin in Argentina on Tuesday
and stated that the Government's objective is that "in April we have all at-risk people vaccinated."
The Sputnik V vaccine, upon arrival in the country.
AFP photo.
Asked about the existence of an alleged campaign to discredit the Sputnik V vaccine, Fernández asked to contemplate the "commercial" and "geopolitical" war between vaccine suppliers.
For his part, when asked about the existence of an alleged campaign to discredit the Sputnik V vaccine, he stated that he was "struck" by the fact that "the Pfizer vaccine is not called the American vaccine; the AstraZeneca vaccine is not They say the English vaccine and the Gamaleya vaccine they say the Russian vaccine. "
"With all the seasoning that some want to put on it,
it is an institute that has accumulated several Nobel prizes
in its history," he recalled.
He referred to the success achieved in 2015 by the Gamaleya Center, which developed and registered two vaccines against Ebola, through an adenoviral vector platform, a process that was officially approved by the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation.
"Knowing all this, we want to guarantee vaccines for all our citizens," said Fernández.
For his part, he stressed that the country has
hyperimmune equine serum
that "practically reduces mortality by half" in treatments against the coronavirus, an Argentine development whose use was approved last Tuesday by the National Administration of Medicines, Food and Medical Technology (Anmat) for moderate and severe patients.
"The cost of treatment is equal to that of a day of intensive therapy," said the President, who closed by explaining that a Covid-19 patient can spend an average of 20 days in intensive therapy.
With information from Télam
AFG
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