Natasha Niebieskikwiat
05/24/2021 4:45 PM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 05/24/2021 4:45 PM
The statistics are compelling.
Vaccination in the Falkland Islands against Covid 19 can be considered a regional record: 77% of its population has already received at least one dose and
52% are twice vaccinated
, with the AstraZeneca drug designed by the University of Oxford.
As of this Monday, according to the Our Wolrd Data site,
4,407 doses were administered on the islands
.
There have only been 63 positive cases of Covid since last year and the situation remains under control.
They had no deaths from the disease.
The facts completely leave the continent in need, since Argentina has become
one of the places in the world with the most deaths and infections per million inhabitants
and has a very low level of vaccination with double doses, 5.3% of the population.
The British Air Force plane at Brize Norton Base in the United Kingdom, which departed with AstraZeneca vaccines for the Falklands.
The first trip was made last February
The comparison is undoubtedly provocative.
It also has its nuances because the Malvinas population is just over 3,000 inhabitants.
But it is still important because of the context in which it occurs.
A year ago, when the first strict quarantine began in Argentina, the Government
offered the islands help with supplies, hospitals and future vaccination
.
The islanders rejected it due to more or less known reasons: they do not want to have any legal relationship with Argentina, and in fact in a referendum they did, in 2013, more than 98% voted to remain British.
Later, from Buenos Aires it was decided that the local statistics of deaths and infected included those of the archipelago.
Malvinas Vaccination Center at City Hall, Municipality
The Malvinas vaccination plan seemed easy due to the shortage of inhabitants.
However, as part of the 14 Overseas Territories that the United Kingdom claims, they joined the call to London for help to face the pandemic.
The operation was titanic due to the remoteness of certain places, and the centrality of the island of Great Britain, which first vaccinated its own.
The Falklands were left without flights to London from South America when the two routes that Latam made from Chile and Brazil were suspended with restrictions - with monthly stops in Punta Arenas and Córdoba - and which they hope to resume in the middle of the year.
But already in January, the medical director of the Falkland Islands, Rebecca Edwards, promised a "plan of attack" on the virus, with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which is the one applied in the United Kingdom, in a vaccination program that it is considered successful.
In a BBC report on how the UK supplied its overseas territories with covid vaccines, it was reported that
more than 250,000 doses had already
been
distributed to most of its 14 old colonies.
.
The islands are almost 13,000 kilometers away from London. The British Royal Force sent a Voyager to supply the Falklands. He traveled from the Brize Norton base in Oxforshire to Mount Pleasant in the Falklands. And the islands also served as a stopover for a Royal Navy ship to deliver to the small island of Tristan da Cunha, an archipelago also located in the South Atlantic.
