Ecuadorian Minister of Health was sacked for …

President Lenin Moreno has appointed a new Minister of Health after hundreds of elderly people lined up for up to seven hours to be vaccinated against the coronavirus in Quito. By replacing Mauro Falconí (Photo), Doctor Camilo Salinas becomes the fifth Minister of Health to hold this post since the start of the pandemic and the sixth since the inauguration of Moreno. The change in the health portfolio comes days before the second round of presidential elections, and amid the increase in covid-19 cases in Ecuador, which so far leaves the country with 341,619 infected and 17,115 dead.

On your Twitter account, Lenin Moreno assured that the priority of the new minister “will be to continue the implementation, to correct the errors and to strengthen the vaccination plan”.. Hours earlier, local media published footage of long lines of older adults who had to wait up to seven hours to get their covid-19 vaccine in schools and sanatoriums in Quito.

Dr Salinas was governor of the province of Los Ríos until October 2020, when he resigned amid the pandemic. Former Minister Falconí, who had only been in office for 19 days, arrived to replace Rodolfo Farfán, who also had to resign punctuated by a VIP vaccinated scandal.

Farfan, for its part, had assumed on February 26 instead of Juan Zevallos, who spent a year at the helm of the Health portfolio and was criticized for handling the first group of coronavirus vaccines to arrive in Ecuador on January 20, in addition to admit that he had inoculated his mother as “minister, doctor and son”.

According to the government’s plan, vaccination was to begin with medical personnel. However, academics, political veterans, journalists and sports leaders have been learned to be a priority for immunization. After this revelation, the Ecuadorian public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation for suspected influence peddling.

Before Zevallos occupied the Ministry of Health Catalina Andramuño, who resigned after less than a year in office due to a lack of budget to deal with the pandemic, and Veronica espinosa, left office in July 2019 amid criticism that a basket of new drugs was not approved.