Coronavirus: “We are with few doses and vaccinating slowly,” acknowledged one of the specialists who advises the national government

The infectologist Eduardo Lopez assured that it is evident that Argentina is going through a complex moment in its immunization plan against the coronavirus because “there is low supply ”of doses and the government is“ vaccinating slowly ”.

The main concern of the specialist points to adults over 60, an age range that accounts for 85% of deaths from COVID-19. “There are more than 7 million people, for whom we need 15 million doses and Argentina did not receive even half”, He raised.

López is a member of the advisory committee of the national government, although he acknowledged that they have not had meetings with the President for several months. They did speak recently with the Minister of Health, Carla Vizzotti, in a meeting held by the virtual platform Zoom.

According to the vaccination monitor -available in the home of Infobae– Argentina accessed 4,050 doses from different laboratories. Just over half (2,404,194) were applied. Only 451,311 agreed to a full immunization with the two doses.

“I think we have to talk to all the labs, including Johnson & Johnson, whose one-dose vaccine has just been approved, and get back to negotiating with Pfizer. We need to dialogue with multiple laboratories to have the largest number of vaccines, ”he recommended. And he diagnosed: “If we cannot vaccinate the elderly before winter, we run the risk of having a regrowth”.

López also expressed his concern about the situation in Brazil, especially the Manaus strain, which has higher rates of virus transmissibility. Although he considered the measure adopted by the national government to restrict flights to be correct, the infectologist believes that even tougher measures should be advanced at the borders.

“Today we are with a high number of cases. We do not go below 7,500 a day on average. So, we are facing a scenario in which we have to re-insist on the personal care of people in terms of the use of the chinstrap, which is totally irregular, social distancing, which is often not respected and in terms of the need to avoid crowds and meetings ”, assured the specialist in radio statements to The uncovering.

The national government anticipated that 3 million doses of one of the vaccines developed in China will arrive this week. However, they cannot be applied to older adults because it has not yet been enabled. These injections are expected to be aimed at people between the ages of 18 and 59 who are members of the security forces and other strategic groups.

Argentina plays a race against the clock. He hopes to vaccinate as many people as possible before the onset of the coldest months of the year, the virus’s favorite season. The success of some countries in the region exposes the country’s difficulties.

Chile has been leading the immunization process against the coronavirus by far, in the midst of the difficulties of Latin American countries to massively access vaccines, at least until the second half of 2021. However, beyond the advancement of its vaccination campaign with which expects to inoculate 80% of its population by the end of June, the trans-Andean government ordered the return to the strictest phase of isolation in several communes.

What do they say the numbers of Piñera’s vaccination campaign that the Argentine government looks askance? First of all, it should be remembered that any comparison requires looking at the size of the population. According to the data published on the statistics site Our World in Data (OWID), Chile has been applying 13,728 daily injections per million inhabitants, with a population that is less than half that of Argentina, while our country applies 2,107 doses per day for every million residents in the national territory. Chile’s pace, beyond all ideology, is almost six times more.

In fact, according to this Oxford University site, Chile is currently the country that is administering the vaccine the fastest in the world, with an average of 1.37 daily doses per 100 inhabitants inoculated in the last seven days. Something that all the leaders of the region envy to Piñera, who on Friday applied his second dose of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine.

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