After months of confidential negotiations with the technical teams of the American laboratories and the White House, the national government announced the publication of a DNU that will allow to unblock the acquisition of vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. First, a “Covid-19 Repair Fund” will be created that will be responsible for the payment of compensation in the event that a person is harmed by the application of the vaccine. Second, the term “negligence” will be eliminated as a liability assumption in the vaccine procurement law, which had already been identified as one of the main obstacles to negotiating with Pfizer. And finally, it establishes that all State assets will have “sovereign immunity”, with the exception of the royalties it receives for the exploitation of natural resources. “This opens up three possibilities to receive vaccines: the bilateral agreements we have with different laboratories, the COVAX mechanism, and the opportunity for new donations from different states, especially the United States,” explained Health Minister Carla Vizzotti, who was in charge , together with the Legal and Technical Secretary, Vilma Ibarra, to make the announcement. The DNU, which will be published on Saturday in the Official Gazette, will turn to Congress next week where the ruling party will give it a quick approval.
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“The president made the decision to sign a DNU so that Argentina can acquire pediatric vaccines and expand the spectrum of vaccines available to the general population. This DNU that is signed today is the result of an arduous process of negotiations with the laboratories that They had declared the impossibility of hiring within the framework of the law, “Vilma Ibarra began, tired but in a good mood at a press conference at Casa Rosada. After several days of speculation and a frustrated attempt by the bloc of Deputies of Juntos Por el Cambio to modify Law 27,573, the two officials who were seated at the negotiating table with the North American giants, along with Cecilia Nicolini, announced that they had reached an agreement. “It was a work of many months, and we decided to announce it when we understood that the parties had come close enough and a solution had been reached. It is the timing that was required,” said one of the officials to this medium, trying to settle the theories that they maintained that action had been taken due to mounting pressure due to the lack of an agreement with Pfizer (which is one of the few vaccines approved for use in children and adolescents).
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Changes in the DNU
“We have worked hard to bring positions between the demands of the suppliers and the interests of the State, to reach an agreement in which the wishes of the laboratories are fulfilled but the interests of the Nation are respected,” explained the Legal and Technical Secretary , with a message that always revolved around the difficulty of reconciling the demands of the laboratories with the need to protect the assets and interests of the State. The first novelty of this “overcoming legal framework” consists of the creation of a Covid-19 Repair Fund to respond to the payment of compensation “in the event that a person may be harmed by the application of a vaccine.” This fund will be used for all vaccines (not just North American ones) and will consist of 1.25 percent of the “free carrier” value (that is, without the costs of logistics) of the vaccines administered. “We have the peace of mind that there is a fund that responds and, if it does not, it is the State that takes over,” explained Ibarra.
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Secondly, the DNU deletes the word “negligence” as an assumption of liability for laboratories in Law 27.573, thus enabling the possibility of an agreement with Pfizer (whose manager, Nicolás Vaquer, had admitted that it had been one of the impediments to close negotiations). This, however, was not the only change in the vaccine procurement law. In Article 4, where it refers to the term “negligence” and the Executive’s power to establish “patrimonial indemnity” clauses, the expression “fraudulent maneuvers, malicious conduct” is replaced by that of “fraudulent conduct.” A clearer concept that is used in the Civil Code.
Lastly, regarding the immunity of State property, the royalties received by the State and private property of the State are exempted from immunity when responding for eventual executions. Meanwhile, all sovereign assets established in the Debt Sustainability Restoration Law “will remain sovereign,” that is, they cannot be subject to foreclosure. Among these last assets are the reserves of the Central Bank, the Anses Sustainability Guarantee Fund, embassies, ships, etc. “This was a precise instruction from the president,” Vilma Ibarra insisted repeatedly.
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As indicated by the officials, these modifications will allow “opening the doors” to negotiate with various laboratories that had objected to the first legal framework. “We are not establishing an agreement, we are announcing a DNU,” they warned, implying that the signing of the contracts with Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson is still missing. However, there are many expectations, after long negotiations with the White House, that in a few more days the number of doses that will reach Argentina will be defined as part of the donation that US President Joe Biden will make to Latin America. “When we close the agreement we will confirm the quantity of doses,” said one of the figures participating in the negotiation table. Meanwhile, as Vizzotti indicated in the conference, yesterday a new record was broken with 400 thousand doses applied.
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