COVID-19 vaccine development pipeline gears up

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PART 2:
26 January 2021....by Fabiola Czubaj and Pablo Fernández Blanco.
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Restricted access. The secrecy that surrounds Sputnik V in the country does not occur only between the Government and the population, but also within the State. LA NACION confirmed that the orders that go from 16 to 46 in the vaccine approval file are of restricted access. The documents include information erasures, sometimes complete pages in black, illegible even for the translation of Paula Danielievna Di Santo. They are "non-visible parts", says the translator (see images).

One of those who do have access is Mauricio Monsalvo, undersecretary of Administrative Management of the Ministry and in charge of complying with the procedures. Monsalvo was coordinator of the Remediar Program between 2010 and 2016. The specific file with the information on the purchase of the vaccine is confidential. As LA NACION was able to verify, between December 3 and 12, only seven officials had access, including Minister Ginés González García and the Secretary for Access to Health who traveled to Russia, Carla Vizzotti.

According to specialists in public administration, this restriction is rare. Before the consultation by this medium, none of the officials involved or legislators of the ruling party explained why the reserve is so high. Administrative decision 1721 of the Chief of Cabinet establishes the guidelines for the acquisition of vaccines against Covid. It's from September of last year. There he argues that the processes must have a high degree of transparency, something that conflicts with the reserved nature of the operation. In fact, the Government would be empowered to maintain secrecy only in cases where national security is at stake.

"The forecast of reserving 10 million treatments of the Russian vaccine even before it has finished its research process allowed that, today, Argentina has enough doses to provide one of the safest and most effective vaccines available to its population of risk ", says deputy Pablo Yedlín (Frente de Todos), president of the Commission for Social Action and Public Health of the National Chamber of Deputies. The legislator highlights the work "in the current global context of high demand and low supply" of Congress, by sanctioning "the harsh rules required by this hiring process, confidentiality, extension of jurisdiction and payment of compensation" to carry forward what the ruling party proclaims as "the largest vaccination campaign in the history" of the country.

Along these lines, the Government maintains that it bought 22.43 million doses of AstraZeneca (Yedlin clarifies that they will be available from March), 9 million from the so-called COVAX fund and another 20 million from the Russian one. "The delay in the AstraZeneca laboratory, whose vaccine was the one that the Government expected to have before the others, is due to the fact that it suffered a setback in the investigation, which generated a turnaround in the negotiations and forced them to focus on the Sputnik vaccine -V from the Gamaleya National Center, which, without prejudice to the prestige of that institution, is the least documented of all. However, the political need to have a photo vaccinating someone before the end of last year managed to advance a symbolic game of 300,000 doses for the first application (Ad26) ", indicates the deputy Carmen Polledo (PRO), who shares commission with Yedlín as 1st vice president. "Why other negotiations did not succeed should be clarified by the Government," he says.

National deputy Eduardo "Bali" Bucca (PJ), who is a member of the Lower House Health Commission, maintains that the emergency approval is adjusted to the law by the new law that empowers the Minister of Health to do so. "The Sputnik V vaccine is one of the three that the Argentine State has already approved by the same mechanism and the only one circulating in the country. None of the other bidders have offered the Government today a specific number with their pluses and minuses. ", indicates the legislator. "Regarding the supply and the deadlines, the central point is to know who manufactures it and from which country. But, until Argentina has the possibility of visiting the plants, it will not be able to be certain of the arrival or not of the vaccines. . The Government cannot be so informal of not giving clear and precise information of the manufacturer, the terms of manufacture and the origin ", thinks Bucca. "Responsibility must be appealed to when communicating because beyond the signed contracts, the assigned quotas, there is a production and logistics variable that does not depend on Argentina," says Bucca. And: "Producing the vaccine means having the supplies, the materials for the assembly of the doses and, in this context of global demand, the State must be responsible for not generating false expectations in society. In addition, it must establish all the mechanisms so that in the future that production can also have national dominance. "

In part, Polledo also attributes the public distrust generated by this reservation and purchase procedure to the government's communication style. "She prefers to informally let the documentation possessed transcend instead of publishing it where it corresponds, which is the ANMAT site, or the Ministry of Health," she says. It refers, in particular, to one of the ANMAT reports that the regulatory body recently "recognized as its own" after a request for access to public information from the Coalicion Civica. "On the other hand, there is an exaggeration by the ruling party regarding the scope of the confidentiality compromised in the contracts", defines the legislator.
 
26 January 2021
The vaccination plan was delayed because Russia delays the delivery of the promised doses for January and February. Vladimir Putin promised to send 20 million doses of Sputnik V in the first two months of the year, and the Government already assumes that this trade agreement will be breached by the pharmaceutical plants that respond to the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin has already caused enormous political damage to Alberto Fernández who supported his first massive vaccination plan against COVID-19 in the ten million doses of Sputnik V that the Russian leader promised to send between January 1 and February 28 . Those doses will not arrive according to what is established in the contract signed by Argentina and the Russian Direct Investment Fund, and the reason for the delay is very easy to explain: they have not yet been manufactured by the pharmaceutical plants that receive direct orders from the Kremlin.

The President complied with all commercial, political and institutional steps within his reach. He signed the contracts, deposited the promised millions of dollars, enlisted the Aerolineas Argentinas planes, authorized the use of the vaccine through ANMAT and the Ministry of Health, sent two official delegates to Moscow to explain their health needs, and prepared a plan national in scope without making partisan differences.

However, Alberto Fernández made an implacable mistake: he trusted Putin, a president who conditions the value of the word on his own geopolitical interests.

The presidential adviser Cecilia Nicolini and the Secretary of Health, Carla Vizzotti, who traveled to Moscow under the direct instruction of Balcarce 50, yesterday tired their cell phones, their WhatsApp service and spoke via zoom with the commercial managers of the Sputnik V vaccine to have a situation chart. On the other side of the world, in the offices of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the managers of the Kremlin nomenclature recognized to Nicolini and Vizzotti that they could not meet the shipments scheduled for January and February.

"Let them send what they have, what they can," was the direct instruction of the Casa Rosada, transmitted without delay to the negotiators of the Sputnik V vaccine. And the response from Moscow was immediate: “Agreed. But today (for yesterday) do not send the plane. We will notify you ”.

Moscow's failure to comply places the government in a labyrinth. The agreement with China has not yet been closed, Pfizer did not answer the legal counterproposal to close a supply contract for 3 million vaccines, the AstraZeneca doses only arrived in March and Moderna could only deliver its product in the second half of 2021. Alberto Fernández's first health bet was the Russian vaccine promised by Putin. And the government has already assumed that the massive vaccination plan will be delayed with no solution in sight. There is no way to supplant the ten million doses that the Kremlin promised at the end of last year.

Russia's delay in delivering Sputnik V may also put Alberto Fernández in an uncomfortable situation with his friend Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The president of Mexico announced yesterday that Putin promised him 24 million doses for the next two months, an amount that in the current circumstances will be impossible to fulfill. And it was Alberto Fernández, weighing Putin's word, who recommended López Obrador to start negotiations with the Russian Fund for Direct Investment. It is already evident that the Kremlin leader closes trade agreements that his pharmaceutical plants cannot satisfy in a timely manner.

Vizzotti and Nicolini, the two negotiators with Russia on behalf of the Government, plan to start today a new round of contacts with the commercial managers of Sputnik V. If Putin does not make the decision to release a game in favor of Argentina, nothing will change compared to yesterday's situation. And if it finally does, Aerolineas Argentina will bring from Moscow -in the next few hours- a maximum shipment of 600,000 doses.

Nothing else.
 
The flight to Moscow was postponed to bring a new shipment of the Russian vaccine against the coronavirus
It will not come out this Monday as planned. Official sources confirmed that no confirmation came from Russia. For now there is no new date

As Gracielle noted earlier, logistics. It appears Russia isn't ready to ship yet, the Aerolineas Argentina planes have a capacity of 400,000 which may be expanded to 600,000. And so on. We're now in the meat grinder of production and delivery and distribution. Like waiting for Santa on Christmas eve.
The issues with the non-deliveries of the Sputnik V by Putin/Russian Federation expand well beyond the realm of logistics!
 
Can't say I'm surprised by any of this. Argentina is broke and Russia is unreliable.
You could try reading the Infobae article posted:
"The President complied with all commercial, political and institutional steps within his reach. He signed the contracts, deposited the promised millions of dollars, enlisted the Aerolineas Argentinas planes, authorized the use of the vaccine through ANMAT and the Ministry of Health, sent two official delegates to Moscow to explain their health needs, and prepared a plan national in scope without making partisan differences."
 
Me parece. Good reporting Gracielle. We wait for better news and a turn in the circumstances.
Hang in there. Your Santa Claus will perhaps arrive early this year with a bag full of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. Hopefully there will be enough in the first batch to include vaccination of those over 70.
 
Hang in there. Your Santa Claus will perhaps arrive early this year with a bag full of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. Hopefully there will be enough in the first batch to include vaccination of those over 70.
How about over 67?:)
 
I see all the major vaccine producers, BioNTech / Pfizer, Oxford / Astra-Zeneca, and Gamaleya / Sputnik have production problems, it's not something unique to either Argentina or Russia. Contracts aren't defining the supply situation right now. We're going to have to live with that for a while.

Argentina hasn't done badly in the vaccine scramble, it seems the country has got an effective vaccine, even if it's not arriving in the quantities planned. It would be worse to be in the situation of Chile, having got a few doses of BioNTech / Pfizer for show, and now scrambling for a possibly 50% effective Sinovac.

And thanks also to Graciella, this is a very informative thread.
 
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