Government to announce restrictions on coronavirus, amid vaccine shortages, threat of second wave and low-profile health ministry

A year after the declaration of the pandemic, the films of Alberto Fernández seem to have aged badly. In the middle of the silence or the “off” answers in front of himan indisputable shortage of COVID-19 vaccines and the confused distribution of doses, the Government will announce today a new stage of Social, Preventive and Compulsory Distancing (DISPO) in the country to face the pandemic.

The next steps will be known after weeks in which national authorities have avoided giving public details on issues surrounding the distribution and application of existing vaccines, as well as efforts underway to bring in new shipments and strategies that are analyzed to avoid a second wave in the face of the uncontrollable regrowth recorded in Brazil, considered in the world as an infectious center on a global scale.

In fact, as officially announced, President Alberto Fernández himself will be at Casa Rosada at 4:00 p.m. to participate in the meeting of the Vaccination Committee, a body created for that coordinate the different areas and jurisdictions involved in the national immunization plan. The head of state should speak to leave behind almost two weeks of absence from press conferences or journalistic reports the main official in the region, the Minister of Health, Carla Vizzotti.

The doubts relate in principle to the delay in the arrival of more than 50 million vaccines that it had been reported that Argentina would have between the first and second trimesters. Apparently Russia would provide approximately 20 million doses of Sputnik V, a similar number AstraZeneca, two more million from the platform Covax / WHO, and the rest of the suppliers from China, mainly Sinopharm. Of this total, until March 12, the country had only a little over four million, of which two million were actually applied, half. But, in addition, of the 4,050,540 doses, the Public Vaccination Monitor confirms that they were sent to the districts 3,418,965, according to the last time updated Thursday. The remaining questions are when the new shipments will arrive, how they will be distributed and how it will be controlled that they are allocated to the target population and are not wasted in certain “VIP vaccinations”.

According to the latest report prepared by Infobae Based on national data, the vaccination rate for the average of the last few days has increased from 60,000 to 100,000 daily doses, but the growth of this registry will depend on what is available in each jurisdiction and in depots that depend on the country. national government. The contrast with Chile is inevitable: it is in the order of 350,000 per day and about 23% of the population has already received at least one dose.

One of those who warned of recorded deficiencies to speed up vaccination rates was former Health Minister Adolfo Rubinstein, who in an interview with Infobae He noted that the disruption in the supply of new vaccines is worsened because “there is still no predictable vaccination plan.” The former official warned that the vaccination campaign itself is also limited by logistical difficulties, both in the provinces and in the communes.

“The problem now is that they have arrived at roughly 4 million doses between Sputnik V, the Sinopharm and the first batch of the Covishield, but the reality is that when you see the monitor, they were much less distributed, ”he warned. Another voice in this line was that of the prestigious infectologist Silvia González Ayala, full professor of the Chair of Infectology of the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the Universidad Nacional La Plata: “For the vaccination plan to be accelerated, it is necessary to needed to have more vaccine doses and improve distribution logistics and implementation to reduce coronavirus transmission and reduce deaths before the onset of winter.

González Ayala insisted on dialogue with this medium who “Having more doses of the vaccine is as essential as having a quick and rapid distribution. People from priority groups must be summoned and vaccinated quickly ”.

Vizzotti, discreet

The growing vaccine shortage and doubts about the arrival of new doses have coincided with Vizzotti’s decision to lower the public profile, after the ‘VIP vaccination’ scandal and after being infected with the coronavirus a few days after having took office in place of Ginés González García, sprinkled with the admission of journalist Horacio Verbitsky to have received Sputnik V by the direction of his “friend”.

After resuming and receiving the last shipment of Sinopharm doses, the new minister remained isolated. It was February 26 and from then on he kept reporting and press conferences to a minimum, which until then had been almost daily. During these two weeks of silence, the panorama of the pandemic has radically changed for Argentina, both because of the problem of shortages and the appearance of cases of “privileged vaccinated”, as well as the consolidation of Brazil as the main source of contagion in the country. region, because of the new strain of Manaus, hyper contagious.

The Minister was careful to show up during meetings with specialists and colleagues from the provinces and to disseminate the direction through press releases. A milestone in this “new communication “ Was the declaration signed by health officials in all provinces – including opponents such as Fernán Quirós – who rejected “The voices that question the entire functioning of the immunization system in Argentina“.

The new DISPO and flights

The government plans to announce in the next few hours how the new DISPO stage, which expires today, will continue. Among the measures that will be implemented, there is a reduction in flights arriving in Argentina, according to different proportions defined according to the epidemiological situation in each country.

Thus, flight arrivals from United States, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Panama and the nations that make up Europe. If initially the possibility of closing the borders had been analyzed to prevent the entry of Argentines by land – receptive tourism is prohibited -, this measure has been ruled out for the moment, even in areas with strong traffic, like the Triple Frontier.

These restrictions, which will be in the range of 10 to 30%, will be applied despite the fact that this activity is the one where the strictest controls are applied, both by airlines and governments, as it is necessary to mount the PCR negative plane and quarantine it. compliance once in the country.

Beyond this controversy, the government’s concern is in what is happening in Brazil, at the center of the contagion of the P-1 variant of the coronavirus, with a strong impact in the Manaus region, which exceeds the record of deaths every 24 hours every day and that hit a maximum of 2300 on Thursday. The Bolsonaro government is facing this epidemic with health services saturated and on the verge of collapse.

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