Why Argentina sends vaccines to Bolivia and promises 4 million doses to Ecuador

While waiting for the arrival of most of the vaccines against the coronavirus promised for this summer, President Alberto Fernández has started to serve as a bridge for the start of vaccination campaigns in various countries in the region. In what way? Through cooperation agreements and delivery promises of Sputnik V or Oxford / AstraZéneca vaccines.

The first country to bite the bullet was Bolivia, where the 20,000 doses of the Russian vaccine that the Aerolineas Argentinas plane brought from Moscow were traveling today as part of the total shipment of 220,000 units. The cargo was transferred this Thursday to Bolivia in a plane of the Bolivian flag aviation company.

At the end of last December, the Bolivian government signed a contract with Russia for the supply of 5.2 million doses of Sputnik V in order to provide it freely and voluntarily to the Bolivian population. La Paz then sought help from the Argentine government. to move the cargo from Moscow on the same plane that brought the 200,000 doses to Argentina.

The vaccination campaign will begin this Friday in Bolivia.

The shipment of vaccines to Bolivia comes at a time when the Gamaleya Institute of Russia has announced that the smaller quantity of Sputnik V vaccines arriving in Argentina is due to the expansion of production capacity due to “high demand. of vaccine in Latin America “.

Therefore, he said, “it is possible that some batches have delays of up to 2-3 weeks”

// Third flight from Russia arrived with fewer vaccines than expected and 20,000 will be for Bolivia

Alberto Fernández’s promise to Ecuador

But this Bolivia was not the only country in the region to seal an agreement with the Casa Rosada for the transfer of vaccines against the covid.

The opposition candidate of the Union for Hope (UNES) from Ecuador, Andres Arauz, political heir to Rafael Correa, promised that Alberto Fernández will deliver 4.4 million vaccines against the coronavirus in the event of victory in the presidential elections of February 7. These are the vaccines produced by the AstraZéneca laboratory and the University of Oxford and which will be produced jointly between Argentina and Mexico.

“We already have 4.4 million doses insured vaccines after agreement with the Argentine government, ”said Arauz.

But President Lenin Moreno’s government played down the announcement. Its Minister of Health, Juan Carlos Zevallos, said: “It’s ridiculous because Mr. Fernández, no matter how president of a Republic, does not have the power unless he is “the owner of AstraZeneca” and I discover this moment to have vaccines that correspond to the Argentine people for other countries “.

// Ecuadorian presidential candidate assured Alberto Fernández had promised him 44 million vaccines

Alberto Fernández’s “regional diplomacy” in a pandemic

But the president said at the end of December that he had offered his help to Uruguay and Bolivia so that they could be vaccinated against covid-19 in a scenario where, according to denounce, a concentration of purchases of vaccines has take place in the central countries of the developed world.

Alberto Fernandez

In what I can help count on me

“I spoke with the Uruguayan Minister of Foreign Affairs, my friend Pancho (Francisco) Bustillo, and I spoke with the President of Bolivia, Luis Arce. I told them that as much as I could help, they were counting on me. I made myself available to help them and generate the necessary contacts to help them get vaccinated”Fernández said.

In the case of Bolivia, this aid materialized on Thursday with the transfer of the first batch of Russian vaccines from Moscow to the Arce government.

In addition, the president said he would do the same with any other country that needed it, since he knows the “problem that exists” to get vaccines in the world, in the face of a limited global supply.