After the arrival of the bivalent vaccines in the country –the first shipment would have been last month– and the delivery to the provinces of the excess monovalent stock for Covid-19started yesterday the distribution to the provinces of the doses adapted to the omicron variant. While there are districts that this Wednesday will begin to offer them in their vaccinations, others hoped to agree on more definitions at an upcoming meeting of the Federal Health Council (Cofesa) or claimed not to have confirmed dates of receipt or start of use.
At the moment, according to official data, just over 131 million doses have arrived in the country since December 2020, 124.5 million were distributed and 113.9 million were applied, with some ten million pending cold use in the districts. At the last Cofesa meeting last year, the Ministry of Health of the Nation pressured the representatives of the provincial ministries to request doses before January 15 “for reasons of expiration of the batches” of monovalent (developed only with the original Wuhan strain of SARS-CoV-2) .
Last Thursday, The national health portfolio surprised the districts with the announcement at a press conference that it already had a first shipment of 901,440 new doses from the laboratory Pfizer and a second delivery of 1,100,160 more units was expected. Not even in Cofesa’s first virtual meeting of the year, which was the first week of 2023, were these deliveries anticipated. In fact, until last week, the provinces were awaiting the arrival of the bivalents in late February or March and the producing laboratories preferred to maintain the reserve requested by the Nation.
Last week’s official announcement also included another three million of the product from the Moderna laboratory authorized for people over six years of age that will arrive in four shipments between the 8th and 12th of next month, still with a schedule to be confirmed.
“We do not have a very important stock because almost everything was distributed,” said the Minister of Health, Carla Vizzotti, at the press conference last Thursday called by the Casa Rosada. The arrival of a first shipment that was not reported to give priority to the use of excess stock of monovalents had already been reported. “At the national level – the official continued during the announcement – we do not have monovalent vaccines. We have distributed all of them: good logistics practices indicate that the first vaccine to be distributed and applied is the one with the shortest expiration date, and that is what was done in Argentina and what is done in the provinces.”
This week, despite the fact that in some provinces they were waiting for more definitions to have the bivalent vaccines with a stock of monovalent to continue applying, the technical guidelines for the Pfizer doses were published, which are the ones that have already arrived. In this manual, available online on the website of the Ministry of Health of the Nationthe target population is described and how it will be used: “Given the possibility of having the vaccine in Argentina Comirnaty bivariante (original/omicron BA.4-5) approved for use in persons 12 years of age and older, this vaccine will be used as a booster dose. A minimum interval of four months (120 days) must be maintained from the last dose received.
In a telephone survey through the provinces made by THE NATION, the answers varied. In the Buenos aires citythe 60,480 doses will begin to be available in Buenos Aires vaccinations starting today, while in the Buenos Aires province They indicated that they did not have a date of receipt or technical guidelines for their use. “They could arrive, but we do not have confirmation,” they explained.
In Mendozathis Tuesday 40,320 doses arrived, as indicated by the provincial government to THE NATION. The Provincial Minister of Health, Ana Maria Nadal, explained that they will be applied from today to those over 12 in authorized health centers. And even when the cases of Covid-19 have decreased in recent weeks, he asked that the population come to get vaccinated given the sustained drop in demand and, at the same time, the local movement that the Harvest celebrations will generate.
“The bivalent vaccine is a booster dose in the same scheme [para Covid] what we have been doing”, clarified the official. “It does not imply the opening of any new vaccination scheme, it will work as reinforcement,” she added. With the dispatch next Friday to the southern province, the entire district will have been covered. In Chaco, a first batch of 23,000 doses, as officially indicated, would also be available from tomorrow. The 34,000 doses that were arriving in Tucuman they would be distributed to vaccinators during this week.
Like his peers in other provinces, Nadal recalled that the monovalent doses “that coexist” with the bivalent will continue to be administered. In fact, in this coexistence and in order not to lose the stock still available, two pediatric doses of Moderna began to be applied to adults, which in the vaccination certificate is clarified in some districts between parentheses as “0.50 ml”.
With the collaboration of Pablo Mannino (Mendoza)
