Covid-19: Córdoba speeds up logistics of Russian vaccine

Córdoba is preparing its logistics to start vaccination against Sars-Cov-2 with the Russian vaccine Sputnik V, the first that could be available in the country.

If the deadlines announced by President Alberto Fernández are met, a first batch of vaccines produced by the Gamaleya center will arrive by plane in the country to begin vaccination in mid-January.

This week, a Russian delegation will close the contract with the national government for the supply of 10 million doses. Tomorrow, at a meeting of the Federal Health Council (Cofesa), the Province awaits more details on this agreement, the most advanced to date, from government sources entrusted to The voice.

As this is a vaccine that requires two doses for each vaccinated patient, this first shipment would be enough to cover five million people in the country. Córdoba will receive 8.2% of Sputnik V vaccines: 820,000 doses, enough to immunize 410,000 patients, a third of those considered priority by the provincial health ministry.

The priority hard core to be vaccinated reaches 1.2 million people and includes health personnel, security personnel and the armed forces, teachers and strategic agents, such as those who deal with key services such as the electricity or electricity. The water. This list should include people over 60 and people with co-morbidities: diseases that worsen the infection picture such as diabetes, hypertension, or cancer diagnoses.

As it is the first to arrive, the logistics are tuned to apply this vaccine, which requires storage conditions at minus 18 degrees and does not require more than 30 minutes from the time of thawing to the application.

100 freezers have already been purchased to keep the vaccine at the required temperature. And there are already conversations with companies that transport food at 25 degrees below zero (frozen, ice cream) to use vehicles to transport vaccines on the territory. The possibility of adding to a chain of glaciers with a strong territorial presence and refrigerators, at each location, has even been put on the table to store the Russian vaccine at the required temperature. “There are no refrigerators in the health centers of each city, but there are in each Grido, and there is a Grido in each locality”, traced a provincial official, close to the diagram of logistics complex required by this vaccination campaign.

So that the doses are not spoiled, those who are going to be vaccinated with the Russian vaccine will have to wait in the same place where it is thawed. The Province is considering a system in which there are health workers responsible for thawing doses, other workers who place vaccines, others who take patients’ personal and health data and upload them to the system. And several others controlling social distancing and movement in large areas that are planned for this operation, as many vaccines must be administered in a very short time to a large number of people.

One of the places designed for this operation, in Capital, is the Convention Center, in Feriar. Another, the Orfeo stadium, today in limbo on its future. Playones, open or closed stadiums and large indoor cinemas or theaters are other places under consideration.

In the coming days, the Ministry of Health will do a dress rehearsal, a day of simulation to take the times of each step, to bring the logistics back to the useful life of 30 minutes that Sputnik V has from its defrost to its application. . .

The Pfizer-Biontech vaccine would arrive a little later. Its application presents another complexity: it requires storage at 70 degrees below zero. There are very few freezers in Cordoba available for this. Mexico has stopped applying it due to lack of equipment. Córdoba remains in the race, but so far it would only receive around 75,000 doses, with 2.4 million doses arriving nationwide between February and March.

The AstraZeneca vaccine and the University of Oxford, which is made in Argentina, are said to be available between March and April. The country would be guaranteed to provide 22 million doses: 11 million vaccines. This vaccine is stored at a temperature very similar to that of the common influenza vaccine: between two and eight degrees. This would facilitate its application and allow a door-to-door vaccination campaign and would use the provincial network of 780 vaccinations.

The province’s concern is to vaccinate as many people at risk as possible before the arrival of the second wave of the disease. This, if not planned due to the loss of care and unscrupulous behavior of the population, would occur in late March or early April. But it is to be feared that the trigger truncates the de-escalation and accelerates the times.

Defused. On October 30, Cordoba saw its peak of occupied beds in hospitals with Covid patients: 1,715 people. Yesterday, less than a month later, they were almost half: 950. Occupancy has fallen below 40%.