10:35 AM
Sunday 28 February 2021
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Buenos Aires – (AFP):
Thousands of citizens demonstrated in several cities in Argentina, to protest against discrimination in distributing vaccines and giving them to important people, in a scandal that led to the resignation of the former Minister of Health, Jines Gonzalez Garcí.
Protesters gathered, waving blue and white flags, outside government headquarters in Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, and in other cities.
They carried banners reading “Give me my vaccination”, “Get away, all of you,” and “Stop wasting our money.”
Garcy resigned last Friday after it emerged that the 75-year-old doctor had helped friends get vaccinated before their turn.
The scandal was revealed after the 71-year-old journalist Horacio Verbitzky announced to the radio that thanks to his long friendship with the Minister of Health, he was able to get a vaccine in his office before the rest of the population.
On Monday, the government issued a list of seventy people who received the vaccine outside the official campaign that it launched at the end of December, including Economy Minister and former President Eduardo Duhalde (38 years), his wife and their children.
“They started giving vaccinations to friends of those responsible. They are stealing someone else’s life,” Irene Marcet, who participated in the protest in the Plaza de Mayo, told AFP.
On the grids in front of Casa Rosada, the official residence of the Argentine president in Buenos Aires, protesters hung huge black body bags marked with the names of vaccinated pro-government leaders.
President Alberto Fernandez condemned these actions. “This unfortunate act only reveals how many opponents see the republic. Let us not remain silent in the face of an act of this degree of barbarism,” he wrote on Twitter.
Argentina, with a population of 44 million, recorded more than 2 million infections, including 52,000 deaths due to the Corona virus. One million people have been vaccinated so far, according to the government.
Argentina received 1.22 million doses of the Russian “Sputnik-V” vaccine, about 580 thousand doses of the Chinese “Coffeeshield” and 904 thousand doses of the Chinese “Sinopharma” as well.
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