:quality(90)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/lanacionpy/J7CKPDIXDFFZTOBSBJ7EMVVYDI.jpg "commission reveals how much of the $ 1.6 billion loan is left and what it was used for")
The current situation in the country and throughout the world is critical, but here it is exacerbated since Paraguay is the country with the least amount of vaccines available to immunize especially white personnel and other groups. The few vaccines that have arrived are donations and vaccines do not arrive in adequate quantities despite promises and the desperate and belated intervention of the Senate. Doctors call for restrictive measures due to the growth of the wave of infections and hospitalizations in intensive care. The worst moment of the pandemic finds the country with a weak, hesitant leadership and with little authority.
A year has passed since that early quarantine, the only thing that Mario Abdo Benítez would have done well. From that first moment, it was known that it was going to be essential to vaccinate the population. The claim of the population to the President is that he should have focused on obtaining the largest possible number of doses as soon as possible. It was not what happened.
The management actors are silent to hide clumsiness and ambitions, since the claims of transforming the health crisis into a business opportunity visit the tenant of the Palacio de López closely.
“Sinovac vaccines would arrive in the country from the hand of the Wasmosy pharmaceutical company,” this newspaper headlined on Friday, explaining that “the pharmaceutical company Index, owned by Ernesto Wasmosy, would have complied with all the requirements of the government of the People’s Republic of China for the acquisition of 1 million vaccines from Sinovac-Coronavac. The signing of the contract is awaited so that the immunizers arrive in the country in 15 days ”.
These vaccines are worth $ 33 per dose, and according to the new Minister of Health, Julio Borba, between 1 to 3 million doses could be purchased. Making the account between 33 and 100 million dollars. “The company would sell us at 33 dollars, it would be negotiating to reduce the cost, but like any company, it wants margin to win,” said the minister. “At whatever price,” said the president of Congress, Óscar Salomón, who asked President Mario Abdo Benítez, and Minister Borba, upon receiving an official offer, to send it immediately for the Legislative to meet urgently to approve the purchase.
Meanwhile, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent letters to the governments of Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, India and Taiwan for the “slowness” of the Executive to manage vaccines:
“Given this serious situation, we wish to appeal to the usual cooperation of your government for the possibility of instructing us and guiding us in the steps for the urgent acquisition of batches of doses of vaccines against covid-19, and even support with items that can be allocated to our country as temporary assistance given the urgency of the moment, “says the desperate text of the letter of dubious diplomatic effectiveness.
Meanwhile the vaccines still do not arrive in sufficient quantity. On Friday, in the Senate, the incumbent affirmed that 200 thousand doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine would be arriving within 15 days, acquired by Taiwan for them as a US stock, but that they will separate those doses to make them arrive in Paraguay. as part of the donation of 29 million dollars that were destined to send for popular housing.
The Government paid US $ 6.8 million to the mechanism, Covax, which promised to deliver before the end of the month 36 thousand doses that are anxiously awaited for this March 16, while another 64,800 doses of AstraZeneca are projected for Easter. , which this year will begin on March 28. It transpired that to make the delivery effective, Health had to disburse some US $ 144,000 for administrative reasons. It also paid US $ 9.8 million for 1 million doses to Russia, but only delivered the 4 thousand that have already been applied to personnel in target. Borba announced on Friday the 12th the arrival of another 3,000 doses for a “cooperation” that he did not identify and later became known, it was from the United Arab Emirates. These days the 20 thousand doses of the Chinese Coronavac vaccine donated by Chile are still being applied.
“Critical epidemiological scenario” with more than 2,000 daily community infections registered in recent days and record in bed occupancy. This harsh situation is attributed to the presence of the Brazilian strain that is most contagious and from which it is more difficult to recover, although its circulation has not yet been officially communicated. It is bad in Asunción, Central, Encarnación, Ciudad del Este and the metropolitan areas of these last two cities.
Leticia Pintos, director of Intensive Therapies of the Ministry of Public Health (MSP), recalled that there are 647 intensive care beds in the country and that 280 of them are used for respiratory symptoms and almost all of them are occupied. “Of all the patients who are in intensive care we have about 180 adults who are intubated,” he explained. “In the last 3 days, more than 100 patients were easily admitted to intensive care and there are many seriously ill hospitalized patients who decompensate. Of the 100 patients, 60% are patients under 60 years of age. We have a high number of patients between the ages of 25 and 45 who enter intensive care with the only comorbidity of being overweight, ”he commented in an interview with Universo 970 AM. In turn, he indicated that there are 12 more intensive therapy beds in clinics and in Ciudad del Este 4 more were enabled and “8 more will be enabled between Tuesday and Thursday,” he said.
In that sense, the Deputy Minister of Comprehensive Care, Hernán Martínez, said that the beds will be increased and it will seek to convert some hospitals to exclusively respiratory. “We have equipment and infrastructure,” he said, only that there are not enough intensive care professionals to attend. This despite the fact that some 200 new white workers were hired.
Rita Villalba of Administration and Finance said that tenders were awarded to acquire 70 thousand doses of atracurium and 150 thousand doses of midazolam. Also that funds amounting to about 100 million guaranies were reprogrammed for new purchases. So far, almost 6,000 of the 70,000 white workers in the country have been vaccinated. The president of the Paraguayan Society of Critical Medicine and Intensive Care, Karina Fernández, asked “that the measures be taken now (greater control or setback of phases), we are in a bad way and we are going to be worse. We ask citizens to comply with the measures, we all want to be cared for, but we can end up not having more beds ”.
“We launched a statement (due to the increase in cases), part of the intensivist team is falling and not all of us are vaccinated yet. Intensive therapy cannot wait for Easter “, he pointed out, insisting on the use of a mask, physical distance, hand washing and preference for ventilated environments. Hospitalization in a private service can cost 20 million guaranies and there is no longer any room.
The former Minister of Health of Chile, Jaime Mañalich, revealed that the vaccine doses were “prepaid” even without being certain that they would work. “Even if the money is lost, it has to be done,” he said President Sebastián Piñera told him in March 2020, when it was believed that vaccines would take at least a year to develop.
“It had to be more than one laboratory and we did it with 4 from that time, where we had a history of trust because they had regularly provided us with vaccines,” he said. Mañalich believes that the president “gambled and won”, and that this was crucial because “there are other countries that did not gamble and are waiting for vaccines.” He also highlighted the role of universities. For example, the Catholic of Chile (UC), signed an agreement with the Chinese laboratory Sinovac in June of last year to carry out tests of the vaccine in the country. “We had to make Chile available so that these vaccines could be tested here (…). And that meant that the universities, through UC, created a consortium of universities that tested these vaccines with researchers from these universities, ”said Mañalich.
The countries with the greatest economic resources are only home to 13% of the world’s population and so far have acquired enough doses to vaccinate their population three times. Since the beginning of 2021, high-income countries have vaccinated citizens on average at the rate of one dose per second. The United States, France, Canada and England vaccinate around 66 people per minute against COVID-19, while 47 low-income nations have failed to vaccinate anyone; According to some forecasts, the latter could take years to inoculate their entire population, which would further lengthen the coronavirus pandemic. “Throughout
and many countries struggle without adequate medical care and without vaccines. A year after the declaration of the covid-19 pandemic, the People’s Vaccine Alliance warns that developing countries face a critical shortage of oxygen and medical supplies to cope with cases of covid-19, but most have not been able to administering a single dose of a covid-19 vaccine the world has already lost two and a half million lives due to this brutal disease
If the covid-19 pandemic does not wane in 2021 and continues to kill millions, “it will be a human failure and, more precisely, a political failure,” warned Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli historian and philosopher, author of “Sapiens: On Animals. to gods ”.
An article for the Financial Times asked why more than 2.5 million deaths in the world? Why entire economies collapsed and even countries closed? “For bad political decisions,” Harari wrote. “’Vaccine nationalism’ creates a new kind of global inequality between countries that can vaccinate their populations and those that cannot… Serious efforts were not made to pool all available resources, optimize global production, and ensure equitable distribution. of supplies ”.
And the main thing: “Suppose that Israel or the United Kingdom are successful and eradicate the virus within their borders, but the virus continues to spread among hundreds of millions of people in India, Brazil or South Africa. A new mutation in some remote Brazilian town could render the vaccine ineffective, and cause a new wave of infections ”.
So he finally advocated: “But some kind of independent global health authority would be the ideal platform to collect medical information, monitor potential risks, issue warnings and direct research and development.”
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