Vaccination: Argentina lags behind, even among same-income countries

The world has entered the coronavirus pandemic full of inequalities and will leave it with even more. Much more? It depends on the output speed of each country. It depends, without much return, on the vaccination.

In a vicious circle more and more difficult to break, the departure date will be the greatest of the inequalities and it will be based – in turn – on another inequality: that of resources. This is indicated by the number of nations that dazzle the world with their quantity and rate of vaccination, from Israel to the United States. The economy matters, but the analysis of the progress of immunization in the world holds surprises more related to the planning than the money.

1. When will the pandemic end in the country?

Israel, Great Britain, Chile, United Arab Emirates, Germany and up United States that in its beginnings, it was chaotic are deceived by collective immunity for the third quarter of 2021, provided that the vaccine provides the longest and most complete protection possible. Their daily inoculation rate allows them.

Far from them in terms of wealth, access and logistical capacity, the poorest nations on the planet depend on international organizations for their vaccines, they could not massively inoculate their inhabitants until 2023 and would cross the threshold of collective immunity in 2024, according to GAVI, an international alliance for access to vaccines. These are the countries of Africa and Southeast Asia; the vast majority of them have not even started the dosage.

What about Argentina? Where will the current rate of vaccinations take you? What will be the dream date for collective immunity? Or if it were far away, what day will be the day when at-risk groups, the elderly, essential and strategic personnel (some 15,500,000 people, according to official figures) will be vaccinated?

Today Argentina applies 84,735 doses per day, according to average daily vaccination of the last seven days (until the day before yesterday). If this rate were maintained, then these more than 15.5 million people would be inoculated with their two doses in 342 days – including those that have already been vaccinated – that is, at the end of February 2022. .

Collective immunity could take much longer at this rate. To these 15.5 million people, we must add at least 16 million more, to reach 70% of the Argentine population (including those under 18), one of the stages estimated by the World Health Organization ( WHO) for herd immunity. They would, then, 32 million doses and 377 days more. The country would reach this threshold around March 23, 2023, in two years.

The President’s government Alberto Fernandez promises that the arrival of new doses of Sputnik V, Sinopharm, AstraZeneca and vaccines assigned by Covax will accelerate the inoculation rate and extend it beyond the nearly 85,000 daily vaccinations to cover a large part of Argentines by the end of the year. The promise is as big as it is vague; and it is also repeated.

The first chapters of the immunization pledge arrived in December, but never materialized. The target regarding the number and duration of vaccinations has been reduced because the arrival of vaccines initiated by the Gamaleya Institute and AstraZeneca has been delayed. Despite this significant delay, Argentina managed to speed up the vaccination rate in March: a month ago, the daily average was 19,401 doses per day.

2. Is Efficiency Just About Money?

The country was among the first in the world in December to launch global immunization and, started in January, it already had more of them than neighboring countries, including Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, all economies having suffered less from the impact of the pandemic than Argentina. For the Fernández government, which boasted so much about the comparison between local health management and that of other countries, this was auspicious news, especially in a year of elections and a pandemic. The illusion, however, did not last long. Lack of resources, planning, logistics and communication hampered.

Compare Argentina with Chile, which has global immunization registries, or Uruguay, which inoculated in two weeks the same proportion of inhabitants as our country in almost three months, is perhaps not very productive. Despite the fact that the three nations share region, culture and language, they have economies with varying degrees of progress.

Chile and Uruguay are high income countries, according to the World Bank; Argentina does not have one and has fewer resources.

After several political crises; nail decade of zero growth, increased poverty, low job creation and less investment; Continuing exchange rate earthquakes and many other default falls, the country is a notch lower. It is one of the upper middle-income countries.

This lack of resources, this growing inequality between nations which is not limited to this corner of the planet could explain the failures and delays of the Argentinian vaccination plan. This could be the explanation, but it is not necessarily the case.

The World Bank defines upper-middle-income countries as those with annual per capita income ranging from $ 4,045 to $ 12,500. It is a diverse group of 59 nations ranging from Tuvalu, Morocco and Kazakhstan to Iran, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. There are also two world powers, China and Russia; their GDP is among the ten largest in the world, but when it comes to distributing them among its inhabitants, they lose the advantage and they pale next to the richest nations like the United States, Japan or Germany.

Despite all your problems, Argentina, with a per capita income of $ 11,390 (2019), leads the middle-income country ranking along with Costa Rica, although China is quick to take the lead. It is also the top-ranked country in the United Nations Human Development Index, based on four variables, including life expectancy, closely related to the strength of access to health.

Does Argentina also rank first in immunization among middle-income countries? He did it in January, but Over the months, the delay in the arrival of doses in the country and the acceleration of inoculation in other nations, the country also began to fall in this ranking., as it had already done before its regional neighbors.

A data review on the detailed basis Our world in data show that Argentina topped the vaccination rankings in January, alongside powerful China and Russia, both producers of the vaccine. At the beginning of February, SerbiaFearing another brutal epidemic like the one in the middle of the year, she accelerated the purchase of vaccines and took first place, seconded by Turkey. Argentina, already delayed by insufficient production of Sputnik V and AstraZeneca problems, move to 6th place. This week, as more countries begin their immunization plans, Argentina fell to 10th place.

It was overtaken not only by larger economies and more resources such as China, Russia, Brazil or Turkey, but also by Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic., smaller nations that share with our country the structural problems that have made Latin America one of the epicenters of the coronavirus: the poverty, the overcrowding and the informality.

3. The surprise of the group

Besides these two nations, another country shows that a long-lasting, effective and large-scale vaccination plan does not depend solely on the availability of economic resources or the pre-existence of a strong health system.

Morocco, whose annual per capita income is almost a quarter of that of Argentina, is not only the country that vaccinates the most in Africa, it is the second that administered the most doses among the countries with upper middle income, behind Serbia. He started vaccinating in February and has already applied 13.5 doses per 100 inhabitants; Argentina, four. It is far from powerful economies like Israel or Britain, but it stands out among countries with fewer resources.

In all already has 8.5 million vaccines from AstraZeneca and Sinopharm, a number which is not enough to cover its 36 million inhabitants, but which covers essential and strategic personnel, seniors and young workers.

How did Morocco do it? With planning, more planning and even more planning. And also anticipation and organization.

“I would say that the secrets were to have the doses on time, to simulate the vaccinations and not to give up the traceability», Explained to LA NACION the Ambassador of Morocco in Argentina, Fares Yassir.

Last August, the government started negotiations with the laboratories and in September it launched massive and intensive vaccination exercises in hospitals and special centers, to test distribution, logistics and appeal; measure times and assess potential complications. From firefighters to doctors to thousands upon thousands of ordinary citizens participated.

In November, health care system “I was ready to start the vaccination,” Yassir said. The government has never abandoned the restrictions either, the national nighttime curfew is still in effect, and in the event of an outbreak, targeted lockdowns are enforced..

With its absolute focus on the vaccination process, the government aims to protect the health of Moroccans and the vigor of an economy which, based on its openness to investment and foreign trade, has tripled over the past 20 years and has enabled to reduce poverty. and increase education and life expectancy.

As Morocco shows, the irony of vaccination is that it is conditioned by inequalities, in particular those of access to doses monopolized mainly by the rich countries, and is, at the same time, a weapon to fight them or, at least, to prevent them from growing. It takes resources, but also determination and organization.