Ignacio Ortelli
04/22/2021 15:04
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 04/22/2021 3:04 PM
After several comings and goings, as adjustments were required in the logistics operation due to the manufacturer's requirements, the national government confirmed the arrival of one million Sinopharm vaccines.
The novelty, beyond the certainty of the arrival of the Vero Cell vaccines, produced by the Chinese laboratory, is that the Ministry of Health ordered that they be applied to a million people who have already received the first dose, in order to complete the vaccination plan.
The decision seeks to clear up the doubts that were generated after on March 26, the Minister of Health, Carla Vizzotti, and the provincial ministers that make up the Federal Health Council decided to postpone the application for a minimum of three months.
The argument, on that occasion, revolved around the need for the Government to use all the doses received to immunize as many people as possible, in a context of vaccine shortages and the rise in infections during the second wave of coronavirus: Since the doses of Sinopharm are the same, that decision had a rapid impact on the advancement of the vaccination plan.
This generated strong controversy, since there was no data from the manufacturers to support the advisability of postponing the application of the doses beyond the expected times.
In the case of Sinopharm, according to the manufacturer, the minimum recommended interval between doses is between 21 and 28 days.
Sputnik V, about 21 days, while Covishield (from AstraZeneca) between 4 and 12 weeks.
There were also no certainties as to the effectiveness of the Chinese vaccine.
Although with two doses it achieves 79 percent, there was no information that ANMAT could show about the impact of a single dose to support the decision.
Different were the cases of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is 76 percent effective with one dose, and Sputnik V, which achieves 87 percent with one application.
With the arrival of these new doses of Sinopharm, Argentina will be close to crossing the barrier of the ten million vaccines obtained: after the arrival of the last shipment of Sputnik V on Monday, 8,932,600 had been reached.
From Beijing, they say in the Government, there could be news next week: they believe that the remaining million of the two contracts signed (for 4 million doses) with Sinopharm could arrive between the last days of April and May.
In that case, the Government has not yet defined whether it will use them to complete the other million vaccinated with the first dose: if new contracts are signed, the strategy of postponing for a few months could be resumed.
"Today the agreement is for 4 million, but we are optimistic and we are working to get as many vaccines as possible", they avoid the Government before the possibility of new contracts.
The first shipment from Sinopharm arrived on February 25, with 904,000 vaccines.
Three days later, 96 thousand arrived.
During March uncertainty reigned but on April 1 China sent a million more.
Now, the operation will be more complex since each vial containing the vaccines will have a dose of the vaccine.
It happens that the boxes of vaccines produced are packed in containers that, by strict request of the laboratory, can only be transported in the hold area of the aircraft.
Thus, the cargo will have to be divided into three flights: two of Aerolineas Argentinas, which will make a stopover in Madrid, will bring about 755,200 vaccines, while another of Lufthansa, via Frankfurt, will bring 244,800.