On April 30, the last 876 thousand 164 doses of vacunas Sputnik V of the second component and also the last ones in existence in Guatemala from the purchase of eight million doses made from Russia, of which three million 963 thousand 044 vaccines have expired, but for the country to be entitled to a refund, Moscow sets a condition.
According to official data, 49.54% of the vaccines purchased from Russia have so far expired.
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And it is that Guatemala would have to buy more vaccines Sputnik V in Russia to be entitled to a dose refund, although they would only change 10% of the total of the first purchase; however, the Minister of Health, Francisco Coma, said that they did not accept the proposal and are still working on the strategy to define the continuity of the contract that is still in force for the acquisition of said drug, which has been rejected by the population.
“It was a proposal, but it was conditional on purchase and we cannot allow anyone to condition us, because we already had enough issues with this vaccine issue,” Coma said.
The official added that what will be done with the contract that is in force with Russia for the purchase of more vacunas Sputnik V and that “it was an effort that we worked on for many months, we tried, we tried to obtain an empathetic response and unfortunately we did not obtain it, because when a request in which an understanding between the parties is requested to reach the best agreements is not achieved because the itself is conditioned of course that there is no possibility of accepting it”.
“Every effort is being made to evaluate the continuity of the contract. I cannot give many details because it is an evaluation and review process by technical entities. For us the dynamic is that we must find those mechanisms that allow us to focus on having a relationship that gives our country transparency and certainty”, added Coma.
In February, 1 million 061 thousand 412 doses of component 1 expired, while on March 31 two million 901 thousand 632 doses of the Russian vaccine expired, of these one million 148 thousand 262 corresponded to the first component and 1 million 753 thousand 370 of the second.
The expiration of these vaccines has represented a loss of US$39,630,440 for Guatemala, since Russia was paid US$10 per dose.
Meanwhile, Zulma Calderón, PDH health defender, pointed out that “It is implicit in the contracts to make purchases from the State that established clauses be left for the reimbursement of medications and supplies that may expire, but due to the confidentiality of the contracts, no one from the Ministry of Health officials is certain whether that clause was actually negotiated as such.”
Other vaccines
Calderón expressed concern about the expiration of vaccines and about the messages that are spread making the population believe that the pandemic has been overcome, which could make them lose interest in getting vaccinated.
“Once again, the risk of vaccine expiration was addressed, emphasizing the large number of vaccines that have already expired. As we had warned since January that there are more than five million doses of vaccines that have expired and another three million more that are at risk of expiration. Unfortunately, with this situation, the entire population that started the vaccination scheme from 6 to 11 years old is no longer covered. and that at this moment the country is not certain that we will actually have more modern vaccine to be able to complete them,” said Calderón.
He added that “The Ministry does not have absolute clarity on how the deduction of responsibilities will be treated of these expired vaccines, it is striking that with all the erroneous messages that we have already overcome the pandemic, vaccines continue to expire.
Calderón considers that at this rate it will not be possible to cover the target population, which is 14.8 million people.
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