Decisive advances in the field of vaccination | Millions of will …

On a KLM plane, 204,000 doses from Oxford / AstraZeneca arrived this Sunday out of a total shipment of 861,000. The rest will land in Ezeiza between Wednesday and next Friday. But the most important step is that at 18, on Monday, on a LAN Cargo flight, UC1101, 843,000 doses arrive, also from Oxford / AstraZéneca, whose active principle was manufactured in Argentina in the mAbxience laboratory. Before the end of the month, or at the latest in the first days of June, 3,960,000 doses of the same vaccine will be completed, also with the active ingredient produced in the country. That same Monday afternoon, the Aerolineas Argentinas flight landed, bringing 500,000 Sputnik 1, and two days later, 500,000 additional doses arrived. This means that in two days one and a half million vaccines will come and in ten days almost six million. An important fact: in June, the mAbxience laboratory, which produces the active substance and has already sent 50 million doses, will deliver an additional 30 million to be completed in Mexico and the United States. This opens the door to a constant flow and the possibility of going full blast with the vaccination.

It is clear that Argentina is not among the countries which vaccinate the most in the world because the laboratories are, in general, North American and European, which also prohibits exports. The same ended up happening with China and India, which also banned the export of vaccines. But Argentina vaccinated more than most Latin American countries, twice as much as Mexico, India or Russia and the same as Brazil.

WHO

This Sunday, the 861,000 doses provided by the Covax program of the World Health Organization (WHO) begin to arrive. For those lobbying for Pfizer, this laboratory has delivered only one million vaccines out of the 40 million signed with Covax. Priority was given to WHO in the contract and nothing was accomplished.

For operational and authorization reasons, the party had to be divided and, according to sources close to the Ministry of Health, 204,000 arrive on the Dutch KLM flight and the rest 657,600, during the week.

Decisive

But the most decisive step will begin to be taken this Monday at 6:00 p.m. when the first 843,000 doses arrive from Albuquerque, New Mexico, the active ingredient of which was produced in the Garín plant of the mAabxience laboratory of Hugo Sigman. . For those who argue that Argentina evolved with ideological criteria, the Oxford / AstraZeneca-Mexico-Argentina project denies them: the lab is of British origin, based in Cambridge.

The step is important for several reasons:

*In the first place, because the country has a production capacity. mAbxience has already shipped 50 million doses to be completed to Mexico and the United States, but last month it made reforms at the Garín plant and is ready to produce 30 million doses in June. The process will then need to be completed also in Mexico and the United States – the Albuquerque plant will continue to work on this project – and will provide doses not only for the current emergency, but also to ensure continuity.

* After the first 843,000 doses, an additional 3,100,000 doses are ready for administration in Albuquerque. Shipments are scheduled before the end of the month, but there has been some delay in approving the Antat – the body must approve shipments from new factories – so some would land in the early days of June.

* This Tuesday, a joint presentation by the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and the President of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, is scheduled. They would inaugurate full-dose shipments to the Liomont laboratory in the state of Mexico. It is not clear if shipments will start this week and if they also require re-approval from the Anmat, which would take a few days.

* In June, no less than three million doses of this project will come either from Albuquerque or Mexicoor. At the North American plant, 21 million doses are being completed with the active ingredients shipped from Argentina.

Moscow

The director of Aerolineas Argentina has made official that at two o’clock in the morning of this Sunday a new flight leaves for Moscow. Tuesday, also at two in the morning, a second flight leaves. As President Alberto Fernández had predicted, a total of one million doses of Sputnik V, dose 1, will come.

During the past week, Russian President Vladimir Putin assured that shipments to Argentina would be regularized and that the Sputnik V project which was to be completed in the country, in Marcelo Figueiras’s laboratory in Richmond, would be finalized. The Gamaleya Institute and the Russian Direct Investment Fund say they will send out the needed item around June 7, when the final quality checks are completed. If so, Richmond will deliver the vaccines by the end of June, one million doses, half dose 1 and half dose 2.

Two concerns arose around Sputnik V:

* There are people who received the first dose in the first days of March and should receive the second in the first days of June. Minister Vizzotti has already said that the effectiveness does not change if the second dose is applied after 90 days and the vaccination will be completed. A group is expected to arrive in June.

* Spain announced that it would allow entry of people vaccinated but with vaccines approved by the WHO. Argentina already owns AstraZeneca and Sinopharm. Sputnik’s approval is, according to Moscow, a matter of a few weeks.

China

As announced by the president, there has been a dialogue with his Chinese counterpart Ji Jinping and a new shipment to Argentina is being unblocked. The Asian giant has prioritized vaccination in its own country, but the process is well advanced and the export of shipments will be authorized in June. The figure is not clear, but on the previous occasion it was two million doses.

United States

There is a wait with an announcement that, supposedly, President Joe Biden would make on Monday. The President will release the Oxford / AstraZeneca games stored in the United States. The State Department is said to have already informed Ambassador Jorge Argüello of the news.

What is mentioned is that the British laboratory has in the United States, unused, some 60 million doses, of which – by contract with AstraZeneca – several million doses could correspond to Argentina.

It seems clear that in the northern country there is a certain ceiling on vaccination, to the point that they offer beer, marijuana and raffles to which a dose is applied. This saturation has led to the arrival of more vaccines in Europe and, little by little, in the peripheral countries.

With this panorama in sight, a real prospect is the arrival of two million doses in the next five days; six million doses in two weeks and 15 million before the end of June.

The restrictions, the strict confinement should be a bridge to the certain possibility of vaccinating, next month, all over 60 years old and Argentines between 18 and 59 years old, with risky diseases.