The Province differentiated itself from Casa Rosada and rejected the possibility of including third doses in the vaccination campaign against the coronavirus

The debate for the possible application of third doses in Argentina, it is already generating marked differences within government. It is that while the Minister of Health of the Nation Carla Vizzotti assured that They “analyze” the question and that it could be health workers and immunocompromised people who receive these reinforcements, their counterpart in the province of Buenos Aires Nicolas kreplak assured that “It doesn’t seem like a reality that needs to be achieved”.

Discussion of the matter began to take shape weeks afterward, as revealed TN.com.ar. What started as an internal debate is now being made public.

On Tuesday, the head of the national health portfolio said that “Reinforcements are something that has always been on the agenda”, but he warned that the government’s priority right now is to complete immunization schedules.

However, in dialogue with the radio Continental He clarified: “We are analyzing the possibility of giving reinforcement to a specific group of health workers and especially immunocompromised people. Surely it won’t be before the end of the year, the emphasis is on finalizing the programs and we still have a huge demand for vaccines ”.

An hour later, at a press conference, Kreplak presented his position on the issue and made it clear that the Buenos Aires health ministry was not considering placing third doses.

“In Argentina, in the province of Buenos Aires, we do not believe that the third dose is a reality that must be achieved. If work is to be done, to certain populations which one could see with a lesser capacity of immune response to the virus to analyze if it is worth the effort. It seems today that it is about a sales campaign of certain laboratories», Launched categorically.

In this way, while the Casa Rosada does not rule out a third dose, in the territory of Buenos Aires, they seem to have buried this possibility.

“We have no health information around the world that encourages the use of third doses.. WHO does not recommend the third dose and asks countries that are considering applying it to donate it to other countries that do not. If we continue to vaccinate with third, fourth, fifth doses in very rich countries, and without vaccinating in countries that are not, we will force the appearance of variants that effectively escape the immune response and that these vaccines stop making sense. Equity is very important in the pandemic, ”added the Minister of Axel Kicillof.

The discussion over a third dose has started to strengthen within the government as the Delta variant of the coronavirus threatens to circulate in a community manner across the country.

As he could know TN.com.ar from official Health sources, in the event that the government does decide to place a booster eventually, it will happen in early 2021 and those who receive the third dose would be the health professionals over 60 which were inoculated with the first of the sera in December 2020 and in January and February 2021. That is, a vaccine would be reapplied one year after receiving the first.

Most healthcare professionals and people over 60 who were vaccinated in late 2020 and early 2020 did so with Sputnik V. Given the instability in the delivery of doses by this laboratory and others, the Ministry of Health of the Nation does not know which sera will be available when the reinforcements are placed. For this reason, studies of vaccine combinations will be joined in the near future by a series of tests related to the installation of reinforcements.

With the doses of Sputnik V and AstraZeneca arrived Monday afternoon Argentina has passed 43 million vaccines and a good part of the contracts with Russia (5 million for component 1 and approximately 12,500,000 for component 2) and AstraZeneca (approximately 12 million doses) remain to be honored.

In addition to these pending doses, there are contracts with Pfizer for an additional 20 million units; Modern in equal numbers; the 5.4 million doses of CanSino, some 10 million from the Indian laboratory Bharat Biotech which produces the doses of Covaxin and more than 7 million of COVAX. In other words, the country will receive between the rest of the year and the first six months of 2022 92,814,900 vaccines, which will allow Casa Rosada to have a doll to administer third doses if necessary.

In Uruguay, the government announced the decision to apply a dose of Pfizer to those who received Sinovac and to Israel it was decided to apply a third serum to people over 60 years old.