In a couple of days, it will be three years since the first shipment of vaccines against COVID-19 arrived in Mexico. Those 36 months that have passed are witness to the erratic decisions of the federal government in the management of the pandemic, whose person in charge always had a first and last name: Hugo López-Gatellwhich was wrong from start to finish.
The former undersecretary of health was unknown almost four years ago, when the pandemic put him in the spotlight. Since then, he accumulated a record of mistakes – which gave him notoriety – that is difficult to match.
Starting on February 28, 2020, when the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Mexico, he did not stop lying.
He lied by flattening the curve since April 2020. He lied by ensuring that the “peak” would arrive in May of that same year. He lied about the end of the pandemic in the Valley of Mexico by the end of June, also 2020. He lied about the fact that special hospitals would not be needed for COVID patients. He lied by pointing out that the new coronavirus was milder than the flu. His thing has always been lies. Heck, even his team lied and hid his hospitalization during his convalescence in 2021.
The data from the Undersecretary of Health never withstood the slightest review. There was a gap in the times, the numbers did not add up, the figures danced. The records of positive cases and deaths did not coincide, nor were the estimates accurate. López-Gatell and his team, navigated without a map.
The undersecretary was never reliable. His decisions cost lives. In the field of vaccines, the ideological bias that led him to place obstacles to the possibility of private companies acquiring biologicals and being able to sell them, caused delays in their application.
López-Gatell He assured on February 3, 2021, for example, that the government would be able to vaccinate “3 million older adults in rural areas” in one week. As in many of his other statements, he failed or lied. Or both things.
On March 24, three months after the first shipment arrived, almost 10 million biologicals from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sputnik V, Sinovac and CanSino had arrived in the country, but 5 million 9,751 had been applied in arms. of the Mexicans. The remaining 40% remained stored in the refrigerator.
That is why it was inexplicable that, even with authorization for its emergency use, its importation by private parties was prevented. Just a few weeks ago, sales were allowed in private pharmacies. The response was overwhelming: rivers of people wanted to apply them. In the early hours of last Wednesday, when it began to be sold, the doses were sold out.
Today the Pfizer vaccine is available to anyone who wants to pay for it: its cost does not exceed a thousand pesos, half of what it costs in the US. Good news. Time, and reality, once again corrected the plan to López-Gatell.
*This column lowers the curtain on 2023. Happy holidays! May 2024 bring happiness and prosperity.
We find ourselves on these pages on January 8.
BY MANUEL LÓPEZ SAN MARTÍN
@MLOPEZSANMARTIN
EEZ
2023-12-22 06:17:59
#years #vaccines #arrived
