translated from Spanish: Ginés González García: “In March we can have the vaccine massively”

In an interview with Radio Continental, the Minister of Health of the Nation, Ginés González García was optimistic about the arrival of the coronavirus vaccine and stated that in March it could be applied massively in the country although he recalled that none is yet approved. While he noted that there is no exact date and that vaccination will be staggered and will last several months he assured that the long-awaited vaccine could be in early 2021 or perhaps a few days earlier for some groups of the population. In turn, he considered that today throughout America “the pandemic is having an unexpected duration. We all thought it was going to last a little, not as it lasted in Asia, but it did, like in Europe, and the truth is that it didn’t.” The holder of the Ministry of Health noted that the pandemic “is a phenomenon that extends throughout America. We remain the centre and unfortunately we have to take measures such as rigidity of control in many centres of Argentina” as “today the epicenter of the pandemic has shifted to the interior of the country”. When asked what he would do differently if he had to start over, Ginés claimed to be very proud of quarantine although he indicated that “surely we would have done a few different things, it’s easy to say with Monday’s diary.” With regard to the measures taken by the government, he added that “if we had not done the initial quarantine, the consequences would be terrible. There would be people who could not have been treated with a much higher mortality rate. Things that outrage a society: like someone can die without having the assistance they deserve.” He also stated that the efforts today are set to stop the spread of the virus within the country as the AMBA was able to be controlled thanks to “the preparation of the system and us, how to proceed, bed management, the brutal expansion of the system that we made in four months across the country.” Among the seven or eight vaccines on the front line, we’re negotiating with five of those. There are three who are doing phase 3 trials in our country, and one will be manufactured here,” Ginés said, on the vaccine, the Minister clarified that “the problem is not when, but how many,” since after getting them he follows what he called “the third phase: the logistics of mass vaccination, which is not easy at all.” In this way he insisted on the need to “not relax now, when it is so close, perhaps in a couple of months, the safest alternative that is the vaccine”. “Every day we have to do activities with great care and self-control, but this has to be a collective responsibility,” the Minister concluded.
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Original source in Spanish