Editor's Note:
Roberto Izurieta is Director of Latin American Projects at George Washington University.
He has worked in political campaigns in several Latin American countries and Spain, and was an advisor to Presidents Alejandro Toledo, of Peru, Vicente Fox, of Mexico, and Álvaro Colom, of Guatemala.
Izurieta is also a contributor to CNN en Español.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author.
See more opinions at cnne.com/opinion
(CNN Spanish) -
While President Donald Trump spends hours “pressing” or “searching” for the votes he did not win in the election, the United States enters its worst moment of the covid-19 pandemic.
The second wave was mainly the result of young people at parties in the boreal summer.
This record that the country lives now is the result of all of us in multiple Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years gatherings.
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To the lack of leadership, especially federal, must be added that in the US there was a significant delay in starting the administration of vaccines.
After having discovered, produced and authorized the vaccines in record time, what if the country does not correct their distribution and administration?
How would it affect the pharmaceutical production chain?
It would be a failure and an embarrassment that we cannot afford.
That we are not able to better administer vaccination is a very serious error in logistics and, in my opinion, in the concept itself.
We met the most difficult: in addition to developing the vaccine, treatments and measures were created that have allowed the death rate to not be higher (although the United States has the highest number of deaths from the virus in the world), but we failed catastrophically in what was the least complicated of the previous steps: the distribution and administration of vaccines to citizens.
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We are at the end of the tunnel of this pandemic and January seems to be the most delicate point of the process.
Without a doubt, we must be more careful and not lower our guard in the use of face masks, in physical distancing and in limiting meetings to a few people, following the guidelines of the experts, which vary according to the states and even between countries.
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But at the rate we are going and if there are no radical changes, the climax of this crisis could be even worse in February and March.
They argue that the problem is economic and, without a doubt, the lack of resources of the state health systems for the administration of vaccines is.
Just hiring additional staff to handle this monumental process is an almost impossible challenge without more resources, but we are also seeing a problem in management and leadership skills.
That is unacceptable in this crisis and in this urgency.
With this radical increase in the number of infections in January, I am sure that this week and the next we will begin to discuss new forms of distribution and administration of vaccines.
To be explicit, let's think about the example of an airplane boarding system: there are boarding priorities (medical system, healthcare system, age, vulnerability, need, etc.) but the process should not be stopped due to legal, bureaucratic or even problems. logistics.
Those with priority board first and the others follow, but the process must flow and the plane must leave on time.
If one of the first priority is late, you can board at any time, but do not stop the process or delay the departure time;
otherwise they must board the next plane keeping their priority.
England adopted the strategy of deferring the second dose to those already vaccinated and instead giving the first dose to more people.
The same was discussed in the U.S. However, the FDA said Monday that both doses of coronavirus vaccines are necessary for it to take effect.
We need immediate national leadership so as not to aggravate the crisis that we will have in the coming months.
Health authorities need more resources (fortunately and reluctantly, the president belatedly approved the new economic stimulus package that includes more resources), but we urgently need to learn from successful experiences in order to have extraordinary management capacity in the administration of health services. vaccinations
This may include changing the concept of priorities so that the process flows quickly and does not stop.
The more people are vaccinated quickly and we all help each other by protecting ourselves (with mask and other recommendations), the faster we will get out of this public health crisis and the economic debacle.
The best we can wish for 2021 is to start off right.
Unfortunately the virus will not wait until January 20.
