Much has been speculated on how it will impact the performance of the vaccination campaign against the coronavirus and the management of the pandemic in the next elections. The PASO of September 12 will be a rehearsal that, like any rehearsal, contemplates the error and the chance of correction.
It is presumed that the sanitary scenario When voting in the general elections on November 14, it will be different both in the number of second doses applied and in the eventual epidemiological impact that the Delta variant may have in Argentina.
But the polls will take a first exam next Sunday. On the one hand, from the national management: decisions on quarantines and restrictions, the strengthening of the health infrastructure and the purchase and distribution of vaccines throughout the country.
On the other hand, the voter will be able to evaluate what did your province do with what the central government provided, that is, the agility with which the local authorities handled the available resources. A panning from Ushuaia to La Quiaca prevents talking about a single pandemic in the country.
The current photo shows a disparate scenario in vaccination coverage and, specifically, in the progress of each district in the second dose application. These differences are also appreciated when observing how they have impacted, in every corner of Argentina, contagions and deaths from Covid.
Although August was for the Government “The month of the second doses”, the impact of that effort was unbalanced between regions. The same did not happen in the North as in the Litoral, or in the Pampean region as in Cuyo or Patagonia. The average of complete schemes in the country today reaches 35.7 percent of the population, but the distribution in the national territory is heterogeneous.
Specifically, half of the provinces are below that average and the other half, above. Those that are better located are: La Pampa (49.9 percent), City of Buenos Aires (49.1), San Luis (44.4), Tierra del Fuego (41.4), Santa Fe (39.5 ), San Juan (39.4), Córdoba (39.2), La Rioja (38.7), Río Negro (38.5), Santiago del Estero (38) and Neuquén (37.4).
By below the national average Formosa (35.5), Tucumán (35), Mendoza (34.6), Buenos Aires (33.7), Santa Cruz (31.8), Chubut (30.4), Jujuy (29.4), Between Ríos (28.7), Corrientes (27.8), Catamarca (27.6), Chaco (27.3), Salta (26.3) and Misiones (24.3). How it looks, the immunity gap in the country is wide: the Pampeans have twice as many second doses applied per inhabitants as the missionaries.
Remember that the vaccine distribution criteria it has been equitable depending on the number of inhabitants in each province. While that may have meant a initial handicap for some districts with a higher proportion of priority risk groups, at this stage of the operation this element is no longer relevant.
The important point of the provincial procedures is related to the speed of application of the available vaccines and the reduction of idle stock in refrigerators. Each territory has different complexities that must be evaluated at the time of balance, but the skill of the ruler is in smoothing those obstacles.
A nurse prepares a dose of the Covid vaccine. Photo: EFE
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The analysis of more and less beneficiaries with second doses in each province also includes which vaccine they received, although this factor, since it is common to the whole country, does not overturn the balance: the greatest deficit is found in those who received the Sputnik V and then inoculated with AstraZeneca. For those who touched Sinopharm waiting and shortages have not been recurrent.
Impact of infections
Another variable for the exam looming at the polls is the impact of contagions in each province, depending on the amount of population. In that area there is ten districts that report a higher proportion of infections than average. In other words, they are the ones that have overloaded the national number of infected.
At that point, a clarification is appropriate: more important than the total population of each province is the population density, determinant in the circulation of the virus. It is not the same to measure the impact in cities, where distancing is more difficult, than in rural areas where the abc of prevention it is almost by default.
Districts that mathematically suffer from a Covid “excess” are the province of Buenos Aires (39 percent of cases against 37 of the national population), City of Buenos Aires (9.7 versus 6.8), Córdoba (9.8 versus 8.3), La Pampa ( 1.28 versus 0.79), Neuquén (2.16 versus 1.47), Río Negro (1.90 versus 1.6), San Luis (1.53 versus 1.12), Santa Cruz (1.14 versus 0.81), Santa Fe (8.9 versus 7.8), Tierra del Fuego (0.62 versus 0.3) and Tucumán (3.81 versus 3.7). In the rest of the provinces, the proportion of accumulated infections per inhabitants remains below the national average.
Geographic lethality
The excess lethality depending on the inhabitants it is monopolized by the province of Buenos Aires (48 percent of the country’s deaths against 37 percent of the national population) and the City of Buenos Aires (14 percent versus 6.8 percent). The list is completed by Neuquén (1.99 versus 1.47), Río Negro (2.08 versus 1.6), San Luis (1.23 versus 1.12) and Santa Cruz (0.87 versus 0.81) . In the rest of the country the proportions are lower than the average.
People who were able to get the second dose in the last week. Photo: Los Andes
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This excess can also be expressed in number of deaths per million population. In the country, this indicator is 2.461. The aforementioned provinces exceed it as follows: City of Buenos Aires, 5,190; Neuquen, 3,374; Rio Negro, 3,128; province of Buenos Aires, 3,077; St. Louis, 2,720; and Santa Cruz, 2,674. The three best located, according to official records, are Misiones (554); Corrientes (1,330) and Entre Ríos (1,673).
The relationship between inoculated vaccines and the health situation not necessarily direct. The averages of excess Covid encompass the year and a half that the pandemic has lasted, while vaccination could positively condition the epidemiological indicators just since january 2021.
On the other hand, the apportionment of the provincial populations in their different age groups it is key to understanding why some have had much higher death rates per million inhabitants than others. The “older” provinces they had to bear the worst of it in that sense, especially when there was no vaccine.
¿There will be correspondence at the polls between the immune happiness of the population and the vote? In the final stretch towards the PASO, the provinces best positioned in the application of second doses will seek to consolidate what has been achieved, while the laggards will surely try give boost to the numb emboli. The sanitary urgency is redefined: how to transform the stones into ingots inside the envelopes.
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