Argentina will offer vaccines against the new coronavirus to tourists from neighboring countries and will apply third doses to the country’s inhabitants over three years of age who are immunocompromised and to those over 50 who have received the Sinopharm immunizer.
Carla Vizzotti, Argentine Minister of Health, told reporters on Tuesday that work has begun with the border provinces, especially the northern provinces of Formosa – a neighbor of Paraguay – and Salta and Jujuy – neighboring Bolivia – to offer the vaccinates tourists “especially those under 18 years of age” who “are those who will enter without having the vaccination.”
Argentina opened tourism to people from neighboring countries on October 1 due to the improvement in the epidemiological situation and plans to receive those who come from the rest of the world as of November 1. The immunizers that are applied in the country are Sputnik V and those of the Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Sinopharm laboratories.
Vizzotti said that the South American country has a “sufficient stock” of vaccines and wants to move forward this week in coordinating the details of the plan to supply immunizers to visitors.
For his part, the Minister of Tourism and Sports, Matías Lammens, announced that tourists will be exempted from having the PCR between five and seven days after entering the country. To enter Argentina, visitors only need to have their complete vaccination schedule and a negative test carried out 72 hours before their arrival, while minors will not have to quarantine.
Meanwhile, the number of people with low immunity and over 50 years vaccinated with Sinopharm who will begin to receive the third doses of any vaccine in a few days amounts to 1.6 million.
Vizzotti differentiated the third dose of the application of boosters, which will be injected from December to health personnel and then extended to people considered a priority.
“The third dose complements the primary scheme to extend protection and with the booster immunity is strengthened periodically, which is at least six months after receiving the primary scheme,” said the minister.
The official affirmed that the vaccines that enter at the end of 2021 and the beginning of the following year “will be strategic to give this reinforcement” and that the National Immunization Commission evaluates applying it with heterologous schemes -that is, the combination of different drugs-, mainly with the Pfizer, Moderna vaccines and the first dose of Sputnik V.
Some 33.1 million people have received one dose of some vaccine in Argentina while 25.4 million were immunized with two doses out of a population of about 45 million.
Infections have dropped in recent weeks thanks to the advance of vaccination. “We are in a very optimistic situation with an average (daily) number of cases in October of 717 compared to 1,634 in September and 26,892 in May,” said the Minister of Health.
But he pointed out that the proportion of cases is increasing among those under 18 years of age, going “from between 8% and 9% in the last five and six weeks to between 20% and 25%.” Therefore, he said, it is very important to move forward with the vaccination of that age group.
Since the pandemic hit Argentina, more than 5.2 million people have been infected and more than 115,800 died.
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