The Government agrees the arrival of more vaccines
Three million Sinopharm, 600 thousand weekly Sputnik V
With the Russian Fund for Direct Investment, the agreement to regularize deliveries has already been concluded and with the Chinese laboratory, only details are lacking for the new vaccines to arrive this month. The goal is to vaccinate the population at risk before the cold starts.
The Alberto Fernández government negotiates at full speed the provision of three million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine and agreed to a weekly flow of the Sputnik V vaccine of at least 600 thousand doses.
The effort is huge and aims to vaccinate as many people as possible - perhaps those most at risk - before the cold arrives.
To these amounts, which are also still being negotiated , we must add the 580,000 doses of the Oxford / AstraZéneca vaccine that would arrive after March 15 and the announcement of the Covax program, from the World Health Organization, which promises two million doses before May.
In the Casa Rosada they perceive that these vaccines, which are produced in India, will arrive mainly in April. The most optimistic calculation is to have almost all at-risk citizens vaccinated before April 30.
The dialogue with Sinopharm is well advanced and the hope is that the shipment of a large part of the three million vaccines will be completed during March. It is not a closed negotiation, the dialogues in general have not been easy, but there are many chances that the agreement will be finalized. A key point is that in the meantime progress is being made in the Anmat with the approval process of the Sinopharm vaccine for those over 60 years of age. Until today that is not authorized and the vaccine is intended mainly for teachers.
The Ministry of Health is confident that the authorization will take place, among other reasons because the vaccine is applied to the elderly in China itself.
In parallel, the presidential advisor Cecilia Nicolini made the agreement with the Direct Investment Fund of Russia and the Gamaleya Institute so that there is a weekly flow. The promised minimum is 600,000 doses during March, but it could climb to one million in April. They are all difficult targets, because delivery delays are worldwide. Canada bought seven vaccines per inhabitant and the newspapers of that country are full of articles in which they talk about the lack of vaccines.
Something similar happens in Europe, despite the fact that the European Union paid 21,000 million euros to the Pfizer laboratory.
The Sputnik V vaccine deal has two difficulties. The first is that the Russian vaccine became a world star and is required by a huge number of countries, including several Europeans.
The second difficulty is that the Gamaleya Institute established three quality controls for the manufacture of the vaccine in India, which delays the entire process. It is estimated that in April this will flow better, which is why the supply figure would rise, at least, from 600,000 to one million doses.
As is known, 580,000 doses of the Oxford / AstraZéneca vaccine arrived in February, manufactured at the Serum Institute in India. The agreement was for two remittances. So this March comes the second batch, also of 580,000 doses. Sources close to the laboratory told this newspaper that the vaccines will arrive, on a commercial flight, after the 15th.
There is the Covax program, a name derived from cooperation and vaccines ( abbreviated vax in English), established by the WHO. Argentina has paid for nine million vaccines and yesterday an official statement was released that almost two million vaccines will arrive in the country before May. The supplier is also Oxford / AstraZéneca with production in India. In the government they think that these doses will not arrive in March, but in April.
Source: Pagina12
Finally, the largest of the projects was the manufacture in Argentina of the active element of the Oxford / AstraZéneca vaccine, something that was carried out in Hugo Sigman's laboratory, mAbxienxe. Several shipments have already been made to Mexico where the final packaging and preparation is made. At a minimum, there will be between two and three million doses in April.
Alberto Fernandez visited the Liomont laboratory in Mexico and found that the main obstacle had been overcome: the United States was blocking the export of essential filters for the manufacture of vaccines. A management by the Mexican Foreign Minister allowed the arrival of the filters in Mexico and, despite the delay, the vaccines would arrive in April, to Argentina and the rest of Latin America.
With all these data, the government hopes to make strong progress in vaccination and to complete the immunization of almost all people with risk factors. The objective, of course, is the eight million citizens who are in that band, but there is a part that will not want to be vaccinated and it is also a difficult figure to reach. It is a race against time because you have to arrive before autumn reduces temperatures, keeps people indoors and increases the potential for infections.
Everything indicates that with the provision of vaccines planned by the Casa Rosada and the Ministry of Health, the challenge will be in the rate of vaccination. For now it is slow, but that's how it started in most countries.
