What the law says: can vaccination against COVID-19 be compulsory in Argentina?

Since the arrival of COVID-19 and the implementation of isolation measures, more than one option has been tested in order to protect the health of the population both in the world and in our country.

The events surrounding the entry into force of the health passport imposed in France, as well as what was announced in the province of Buenos Aires and by the president of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA) concerning a possible obligation to be made vaccinate, generate different points of view (all understandable), but they fail to find the right answer or at least they agree.

The subject raises various currents of opinion: from a legal point of view, public health and society. Without considering the usefulness or not of the vaccine, which today constitutes the only way to eradicate the coronavirus.

It has been understood in this way by much of the world, that in order to “normalize” work activities and citizenship, they resort to “tactics” such as asking for negative tests and also complete immunization schedules.

The controversial remarks of Funes de Rioja, president of the UIA, who threatened not to pay the wages of the unvaccinated, generated in our country the great national controversy: ¿¿it is legal to require vaccination to return to work?

“Faced with this position, the company feels an affront to the right to work and to benefit from the corresponding salary. We include in these considerations the avoidance of beliefs, dogmas and various positions which lead to not wanting to be vaccinated ”, underlines epidemiologist Carlos Di Pietrantonio (MN 73621) at Con Bienestar.

The legal framework

Vaccination is governed by national law 27.491, which says in article 7 that they are compulsory vaccines in the national calendar, those recommended by the national authority for groups at risk and those indicated for an epidemiological emergency.

Law 27491 stipulates that for the vaccine in question to be compulsory, it must be an integral part of the National calendar and, there must be availability of vaccines as a general principle in charge of the health authority, both to enjoy the right to work and to access gastronomic, cultural spaces or those intended to be part of the framework a possible “Health Passport.” It should be noted that vaccination to fight against COVID-19 has not been declared compulsory by the national authority which applies the aforementioned law.

According to legal experts, this obligation having a passport uses several situations:

1. Ignorance of labor laws: 20,744; 24,013; 11,544, to name a few.
2. Inequality before the law, overturning this principle established by the National Constitution, a fundamental and universal principle stated in Article 14.
3. It ignores international conventions on the right to work (ILO), Pact of San José de Costa Rica.

“As such, the State has the duty to remove the social, cultural and economic obstacles that prevent the exercise of rights under equal conditions, such as work and the obligation to be vaccinated for that”, analysis doctor.

The health framework

“As a specialist in public health, I know the scope of law 23 737 which modifies article 204 of the penal code and article 202 of the same code, dealing with the spread of diseases in the context of the emergency. health following the COVID pandemic. -19. Despite the above, one must take into account the definition of health, which goes beyond the simple absence of disease and is defined (with a holistic concept), as a state of physical, mental and social well-being that makes free will an inescapable fact in this definition, ”explains Di Pietrantonio.

Vaccination is not without risk to health and no system can foresee the harmful effects that each individual can have and that, being able to cause damage which can become irreparable, the principle “precaution “.

This way it should be included in the “informed consent“The possibility or not of its application, or even of adding it in the Patients’ rights (Law 26529).

“As a doctor, I am a strong advocate for life and as such I recommend vaccination as the only known method of preventing infection with COVID-19, but as a human being I am against everything. act which restricts our individual freedoms, opposing me compulsory vaccination within the current regulatory framework, which violates the individual autonomy enshrined in article 19 of the national Constitution ”, recognizes the former specialist director of the Posadas hospital.