Ernesto Azarkevich
03/09/2021 11:07
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 03/09/2021 1:36 PM
While the Government of Corrientes tries to overcome the scandal generated by the transport of 900 vaccines against the coronavirus in the van of the Minister of Public Health,
Ricardo Cardozo,
outside the protocols;
The opposition came out to demand information on the vaccination process and the distribution of the doses sent by the Nation.
The case was known because Cardozo broke down when he was driving along Maipú Avenue in the city of Corrientes and collided with another vehicle.
When the paramedics arrived, they found in the back seat
two huge conservatives with 900 doses of Sputnik V
that were destined for the city of Goya, the place where the minister was going to join the epidemiological team that had arrived hours before by air to try control a covid 19 outbreak.
Cardozo had withdrawn a while before the 900 immunizations from the warehouse of the drugstore that was contracted at the end of last year by the Province for the reception and distribution of the vaccines.
While the minister was undergoing a coronary intervention, the vaccines were sent to Goya in a private company vehicle, as established by the protocol.
The provincial senator of the Frente de Todos, Martín Barrionuevo, said that “now what remains to be explained is what the minister was doing with vaccines in his private vehicle.
It seems to me that such things are inadmissible, "he added.
Barrionuevo affirmed that “although we believe in the good faith of the official, here it takes much more than voluntarism, we are facing the most important massive vaccination campaign in Argentina, and it shows with these facts that in Corrientes there is a lack of planning, it is necessary to comply with the protocols and lack of transparency ”.
The legislator asked to have a Public Vaccination Monitor detailing the quantities distributed, who were inoculated to make the process transparent.
"The truth is that there are many things that must be corrected and from the Legislature we are going to request the corresponding reports," he insisted.
"What are the protocols for transporting vaccines in Corrientes?
A delayed, disorganized and non-transparent process ”, Barrionuevo posted from his Twitter account.
And he assured that Corrientes applied less than 50 percent of the doses he received.
The provincial deputies of the Frente de Todos, César Acevedo, Marcos Bassi, Marcos Otaño, Alicia Meixner, Félix Pacayut, Miguel Arias and José Mórtola, have already raised a request for information to Governor Gustavo Valdés.
They demanded “explanations about the road episode that the minister Ricardo Cardozo starred in, in which the irregular handling of federal resources, hyper-scarce and hypercritical, such as the vaccines against Covid-19, that the national government sends to Corrientes to fight against the pandemic ”.
For the legislators, it is key to clarify
"under what character he had vaccines against Covid-19 in his private vehicle"
and that the Government send "all the documentation that proves the authorization by which the transfer of the doses was allowed" .
But they also said that they will go to court to request an investigation.
“The public still does not receive answers about what an official was doing with boxes of vaccines against Covid-19 in a private vehicle.
Why the Government of Corrientes has such an irresponsible and irregular management with a valuable and scarce resource such as vaccines.
Why does the provincial state say it is spending millions on safe transfers of vaccines, if a road incident proved the opposite, ”they insisted.
Although they avoided mentioning a VIP vaccination program
similar to the one that ended the administration of the Minister of Public Health of the Nation, Ginés González García, the Corrientes deputies suspect a diversion of immunizations.
This Monday, the Secretary General of the Interior, Carlos Vignolo, sought to eliminate any suspicion about the transfer of the vaccines.
He said that Cardozo was on his way to Goya, where an outbreak was registered that forced the city to go back to Phase 3. The official assured that the vaccines had enough dry ice to keep the vaccines for 48 hours outside the cameras . "When there is a safe transfer, in Corrientes we do it," he insisted.
The director of the Goya Regional Hospital, Raúl Martínez, said he was aware of Cardozo's trip
and that the official would personally take care of the transfer of the 900 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine that would be used in that city.
Look also
The Minister of Health of Corrientes crashed and in the truck he had 900 vaccines for Covid-19
The Government of Corrientes justified the Minister of Health that transferred vaccines against the coronavirus: "Here it is common"
