BUENOS AIRES –
Thousands of Argentine adolescents with risk factors began to be immunized on Tuesday with the vaccine against the new coronavirus from the American laboratory Moderna at a time when the spread of the contagious Delta variant looms as the greatest concern.
Young people between the ages of 12 and 17 who receive the immunizer in the different provinces of the country suffer from diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular, kidney and respiratory diseases, cancer and are affected by intellectual and developmental disabilities, among other ailments.
The goal is to immunize about 900,000 adolescents before the Delta variant begins to spread massively in the South American country, something that the authorities take for granted after more than 80 infected were detected in recent weeks, most of them travelers who arrived. from neighboring countries and Europe.
To immunize young people, health authorities use vaccines from the batch of 3.5 million doses of Moderna donated by the United States days ago. The inoculant works through messenger RNA technology and two doses are required for total immunization.
Argentina had to modify a law through a decree to be able to receive Moderna’s vaccines, after that same law made it difficult at the end of 2020 to reach an agreement with Pfizer, whose vaccine is also used to inoculate the adolescent population. After arduous negotiations with that last American laboratory, Argentina recently managed to seal an agreement to acquire 20 million doses during 2021.
Thousands of Argentine families have been demanding for months that their children with disabilities and comorbidities be vaccinated.
The South American country has so far registered some 4.9 million infections and more than 106,000 deaths from COVID-19, many of which died from the second wave of infections produced by the Lambda (Andina) and Gamma (Manaus) variants. and that are now in decline.
Argentina has applied a first dose of different vaccines to 25.3 million people and two doses to about 7.3 million of a total population of approximately 45 million.
The government has indicated that the objective is to ensure that 60% of the population over 50 years of age have the complete vaccination scheme in August due to the danger posed by the Delta variant.
According to the Ministry of Health, so far 89 cases of this variant have been detected in different Argentine cities, of which “70 are imported cases and 17 related to imports.” Meanwhile, the authorities are investigating whether two cases detected in Buenos Aires “with no known connection to the importation” can be considered a sample of community circulation.
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