Coronavirus | Ginés González García warned that the Pfizer vaccine did not give guarantees for childbirth: “There would be a problem of availability”

Minister of health Ginés González García revealed on Thursday that the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the German BioNTech they did not give guarantees to be able to deliver the vaccines against the coronavirus that they had agreed with the government. As he explained, the contract could not yet be signed and it was awarded to “an availability problem“. It was during a press conference in which the government announced that it would sign next week a agreement with Russia by which foresee vaccinate 300 thousand people within the next 28 days, before the end of the year.

“Today, there is a strong bottleneck in production. Pfizer announced it was halved what I thought I was going to produce this year, so this is all an almost daily mechanism, ”he said.

In this regard, he said the country was asking the US laboratory for vaccines “on condition that it is the first” because the price was not the most advantageous. “We ask for priority and we are asking for vaccines for December, January and February “, informed and detailed that they expected three million doses.

// The government signed the agreement with Russia for the vaccine and Alberto Fernández assured: “I will be the first to apply it”

González García noted that the laboratory had informed them that “it had the possibility of delivering certain doses in December”, but they asked them for protection for which Congress had to pass a law in this regard. However, he lamented: ” We haven’t been able to sign the contract yetSuddenly we still do not know what, despite the enormous will of the government ”.

Regarding this inconvenience, the official admitted: “I have the suspicion – but I cannot confirm it – that there is an availability problem for a question of temporality ”. And he assured that the only supplier who guarantees the safe delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to the country is the Russian.

In addition, the Minister of Health stressed that there are other negotiations open with suppliers from different countries. For example, with China for their COVID-19 antidote candidates Sinopharm Yes Sinovac. “We have a wide margin,” he admitted.

About Pfizer, the government deplored this silence in the negotiations, affirming to have put all its will and citing as example the clinical trial that the pharmaceutical company carried out in our country, which included 6,000 Argentinian volunteers.

About the vaccination campaign

Ginés González García stressed this Thursday during a press conference that the the country faces a huge challenge which consists of taking the COVID-19 vaccine “from the factory to the arm”. In this sense, he stressed that there are Ministry of Health teams working in each of the provinces to plan logistics and vaccination, and thus be ready for when the first shipment arrives in the country.

The manager explained that this plan is an important achievement since “drugs have unusual storage temperatures», Which affects both the cargo of the plane that brings it, the distribution and the vaccinations, which must have the appropriate technology to be able to refrigerate them.

“Each year, out of all vaccines on the schedule, 40 million are provided and that alone will be 60 million in the first half of the year,” said the Minister of Health. Also, that “this week or this month” there will be several vaccines that will receive “approval for emergency use” as has happened with Pfizer in some countries such as the UK and Canada.

On Thursday, the government communicated an agreement with the Gamaleya Institute of Russia, whereby doses of Sputnik V 300 thousand people before the end of the year 10 million between January and February. He also said the contract included a preference for Argentina to vaccinate others 5 million people in March. This vaccine consists of two doses, which are applied with an interval of 21 to 28 days.

On this agreement, the Alberto Fernandez explained that always ANMAT approval remains and that next week, officials will visit Russia “to check all the doubts that need to be answered about the conditions of production and the quality of the vaccine.” In turn, he said that has “no doubt about the quality” of Sputnik V and assured that will be “the first” to apply the dose, “before everyone, so that no one is afraid“.

Regarding the doubts about the safety of the Russian antidote, González García indicated that “The safety of the vaccine will be given a little by the evolution”. And he announced that they were preparing with ANMAT “a pharmacovigilance system”, which will monitor people who are immune during the first year.

Asked where the vaccines came from, González Garcías explained that “the Russian company is waiting to pass on the technology, it is estimated that large-scale production will be in Korea or India”, but the first will come from Moscow.

Finally, the official alerted the population that the vaccine will not end the pandemic, at least in the short term. “Even with the vaccine, until immunization levels are reached so that virus circulation is reduced, several months will pass. We are going to reduce mortality initially, but not the circulation of the virus, ”the minister stressed. For this reason, he stressed that the ministry’s campaign will appeal more to individual responsibility.

And he mentioned that despite the fact that positive cases in Argentina “continue to decline”, countries in South America “are at increasing risk in the middle of summer”, which shows that the climate is not a guarantee. of decline.

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