The 437 days of Ginés González García in the Government: from the song 'We have a Ministry!' to the VIP vaccination scandal

02/19/2021 20:15

• Clarín.com

• Politics

Updated 02/19/2021 8:23 PM

"

Health is ministry, health is ministry,

"

chanted the workers of the health portfolio to receive again, on December 12, 2019, Ginés González García.

That ovation materialized the expectations for his return, which were later diluted by the wear that the coronavirus pandemic caused to his management and by the

succession of scandals that forced his resignation.

On this occasion González García led the health portfolio for 437 days until President Alberto Fernández decided to ask him to resign after the controversy over the "VIP Vaccination" of the Ministry of Health, which secretly facilitated that officials of the ruling party have access to the limited medication against Covid-19.

"Obviously, the Minister of Health has to be Ginés,"

Fernández presented it days before taking over as head of the Casa Rosada.

And he stressed that the surgeon is the one who "knows best what happens in Argentine health."

"Thanks Ginés, I know that I will put you in a mess again, but I know that you have enormous will to cope," completed the then president-elect.

Those accolades took a back seat to the

repeated unforced errors

of González García, who was extremely exposed by the enormous difficulties that the coronavirus installed. 

"I am more afraid of dengue"

The first major setback occurred on January 22, when the coronavirus was not yet pandemic and seemed like a distant disease that hit only China.

That day, the new minister rushed in and assured that

"there was no possibility"

that the virus could reach Argentina.

He also said that so much fear "about the coronavirus was" unnecessary and even that he was "

more afraid of dengue

.

In March he said it was more useful to buy repellent than alcohol gel.

However, on March 3, the first case was detected in the country and at the same time, strict quarantine was decreed.

At that time, the President came out to defend him: "He is the best minister that Argentina can have, he is the man who knows the most about public health. He committed the sin of honesty, he said what was happening. The experts told us that the virus was it dies at 24 degrees and the possibility of it reaching 30 degrees was almost nil.

Ginés did not change it or crazy

. "

Vaccines as in "the first world"

The misguided phrases of González García at times overshadowed the intense official efforts to cover the shortcomings of the health system and try to guarantee care for the most critical patients: a fundamental step was the purchase of respirators.

And those conflicts were aggravated with the first steps to access the long-awaited vaccine against the coronavirus.

At the beginning of August, González García celebrated that the mAbxience laboratory would use its facilities in Argentina to produce the vaccine developed by Oxford and marketed by AstraZeneca.

"

We are going to have the vaccine ahead of time and available as in the first world," he

said, but his words again found contradictions with the events that occurred, because then Argentina fully bet on the medication that the Russian center Gamaleya developed. 

The head of the health portfolio came to star in an interdict with the President, because while he calculated that the mass vaccination would begin at the beginning of January, Alberto Fernández promised that the official plan would begin before the end of the year.

Even González García had to go out to give explanations for some of the efforts of his work team, such as the

secret trip that the Secretary for Access to Health,

Carla Vizzotti, made to Russia to access information about the vaccine.

The legalization of abortion

In the midst of the onslaught of the pandemic, González García played a fundamental role in promoting the project with which the National Congress later approved the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy (IVE).

The legalization of abortion until the 14th week of gestation became one of the greatest achievements of the Alberto Fernández government and ended a 99-year-old legislation that punished women who aborted with four years in prison and only allowed the interruption of pregnancies in cases of rape or danger of life for the pregnant person.

VIP vaccination

And the great scandal that ended up sealing his fate was that of the VIP vaccination, which the journalist Horacio Verbitsky was responsible for advancing when he reported, in radio statements, that the Minister of Health managed access to medication.

That revelation was just a first approach to the system that worked in the health portfolio and that facilitated the vaccination of various officials of the ruling party.

González García was trapped by his wrong prognoses, including by the one with whom he denied that his management would have the same end as that of Graciela Ocaña, who left the Ministry of Health in the midst of Flu A.

"By no means do I think it will happen," he said during an extensive interview with

Clarín

in March, when the coronavirus was not yet a pandemic.