The Peruvian Minister of Health has fallen following a scandal …

From Lima

Amid aggressive second wave of coronavirus pandemic, that health services have collapsed and when the country begins the vaccination process, the Minister of Health, Pilar Mazzetti has resigned. The minister fell into the scandal that erupted when it was revealed in the media that former President Martín Vizcarra had been secretly vaccinated last October while in office. with the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm, which was then starting trials in the country. Mazzetti was Minister of Health when this happened and Congress was preparing a motion to question and censor her, accusing her of withholding this information.. The now former minister assures that she did not know that Vizcarra had been vaccinated. Mazzetti chose to step down from office before submitting to the process of arrest and censorship.

After accepting his minister’s resignation, President Francisco Sagasti accused Congress of “mistreating” her with “baseless accusations” by designating her as a cover-up of Vizcarra’s secret vaccination and said Mazzetti was ” out of print”. The former minister took office in July of last year in Vizcarra’s government, at a time when the peak of the first wave of the pandemic was reached, left the ministry in November when Congress ousted the former president, but returned six days later when Vizcarra’s replacement, lawmaker Manuel Merino, resigned amid massive protests against the parliamentary coup that put him in power and was replaced by lawmaker also Francisco Sagasti, who replaced Mazzetti as head of the Ministry of Health. The former minister had received questions about his management to deal with this second wave of pandemic.

Revealed the dark story of his vaccination and that of his wife, carried out at the Government Palace in the shadow of secrecy, Vizcarra accepted what he had hidden. The former president, now a candidate for Congress, said he was vaccinated because he volunteered as one of 12,000 Peruvian volunteers to test the Sinopharm vaccine. and described the decision as “an act of courage”. But he did not convince with this argument. He justified the secrecy in which he kept his vaccination by noting that the study rules required him to do so. This is not true. Volunteers in this study were not required to keep their trial participation in reserve. Many of them made it public. Refused, he changed his version and stressed that he kept it a secret so that the other laboratories that had negotiated with the government did not feel favored.

This was not the only denial of the explanations given by Vizcarra. In a statement, Cayetano Heredia University, which led the Sinopharm studies in Peru, revealed that Vizcarra and his wife were not part of this study’s testing in Peruvian volunteers, thereby denying the former president and confirming that all two were vaccinated at the margin of this study. Vizcarra responded by insisting he was part of the study that tested the vaccines and expressing that he feels surprised by the version given by the university.

From different political sectors and the media The former president is accused of having taken advantage of his position to receive the vaccine in secret. The ex-president received a vaccine not yet approved – it was not approved until December – but in which he trusted. The secret suspect he did it and the lies he fell into when he was discovered hit his image hard. The impact this will have on his candidacy for Congress in the April election remains to be seen. Some lawyers have indicated that Vizcarra could be accused of having “received gifts” from a laboratory which negotiated with the Peruvian government.

Finally, the contract with Sinopharm was not closed by Vizcarra, who was dismissed from his post in the middle of this negotiation, but by the Sagasti government.Last January, for a million doses, of which 300,000 arrived a week ago and the other 700,000 last Saturday, with which the vaccination process began. The government said it had insured more than 48 million vaccines, which in addition to the million Sinopharms already arriving in the country, include 20 million Pfizer, 14 million Astra Zeneca and 13.2 million of the Covax system promoted by L ‘ WHO and continue to negotiate further purchases.

The resigned Minister of Health has been replaced by the doctor Oscar Ugarte, a public health specialist who already held the post between 2008 and 2011, in the government of the late former president Alan García, although he was never part of the Aprista Party led by García and is close to the center-left. Ugarte becomes the fifth head of the sector since the pandemic arrived in the country in March of last year. President Sagasti highlighted his experience in the sector. He takes office when official reports indicate that contagion cases reach 1,227,205 and deaths reach 43,491. In the past 24 hours, 6,457 new infections and 236 deaths have been reported. Without the time to settle into the post, he will have to ensure a rapid vaccination process, started a week ago, and deal with the collapse of precarious health services due to the pandemic, where intensive care beds , respirators and oxygen are lacking. A complicated task.