The Argentine government agrees with the Chinese laboratory CanSino Biologics the provision of vaccines at a time when it tries to accelerate the immunization plan to face a second wave of coronavirus that has filled intensive therapies in hospitals.
The head of the Cabinet, Santiago Cafiero, told the press that this immunizer that “gives very good results, is a single dose and a large part of the clinical trial was carried out in Argentina” in 2020 with the participation of the Guest Foundation. He did not specify how many doses will arrive in the country and on what date.
The vaccine from that Chinese laboratory is stored at between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius, so it does not require freezing and this facilitates its logistics.
“We want to have more doses than the 65 million for which we already signed, so we continue with the signing of contracts with other laboratories,” said Cafiero.
Virologists have noted the suitability of the CanSino Biologics vaccine. “It has very few adverse effects … Eventually it could be used to replace the second component of Sputnik V,” said infectologist Eduardo López, one of President Alberto Fernández’s advisers for the pandemic.
The government anxiously awaits the arrival of immunizers to speed up the slow vaccination campaign that is also carried out with the Russian vaccine Sputnik V, that of the Chinese laboratory Sinopharm and that of AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford in the framework of a coronavirus outbreak that it has stressed the health system to the maximum.
The intensive therapies of the hospitals located in and around Buenos Aires and in other areas declared in emergency are close to collapse, which, added to the increase in the number of deaths, pushed Fernández to order a strict quarantine from the 22nd to the 30th. of May. It is not ruled out that it will be repeated in the coming weeks.
In recent days, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immunizers to the South American country has accelerated, with which they seek to accelerate a vaccination plan that began at the end of December.
Some 8.9 million people have received one dose of some vaccine and 2.5 million two out of a population of about 45 million.
Argentina has so far registered 3.6 million infected and some 75,500 deaths from COVID-19.
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