Senator Guido Girardi, a member of the Senate Health Committee, called on Tuesday not to believe that for announcements of the eminent emergence of a covid-19 vaccine she is already won, and called for maintaining all essential health measures: masks, hand washing and social estating.
It also required the Government to continue to increase the number of tests, called for no medical order to be required to become a PCR, and suggested incorporating antigens and said they should be performed in public places.
He also assured that a vaccine should be opted for with the right logistics to maintain the cold chain and asked the authorities to be responsible and not be part of fake news that called into question the efficacy and safety of vaccines.
“How the pandemic will affect us in this context of New Year’s Eve and Summer festivities is a decision that is in our hands. It may be the worst Christmas, new years and vacation I’ve had in recent decades, and that’s going to depend on us all respecting the measures that are required to deal with the pandemic together,” the senator said.
He added that “there are challenges for the Government: increasing traceability and the ability to identify and isolate the infected; as well as finding close contacts and quarantine them. But the most important thing today is to increase testing. They’re making 40 grand, which is a lot, but you have to get to 50 thousand a day.”
Girardi called it an “excellent decision that a PCR should not require a medical order and any Chilean or Chilean can do so, if he feels it requires it, without having to ask for and pay for a medical hour and go to an office risking getting infected or getting infected.”
He added that “it must be the laboratory that informs Epivigilia for the process to be recorded. We need to create logistics so that the positives have a medical license and I want to propose to the Government to incorporate the antigen tests that are much faster to deliver the result.”
He recalled that “in South Korea, the most effective country in controlling the Covid-19, they were done on the street or without having to get out of the car. The result was received on their cell phones or by email a short time later.”
Girardi added that “the testing capacity must be expanded, without a prescription and with an effective and efficient system for PCR, but also incorporate the antigen tests that can be done through mobiles installed in public places, so that we can once and for all cut the transmission chain.”
It’s not all settled.
Senator PPD said that “we are going to start vaccinating, most likely at the end of the first trimester of 2021, but this does not mean that this is all resolved and we can relax the sanitary measures – masks, hand washing, esttching – we have to keep them, because the vaccination that will lead us to herd immunity will take several months and, maybe , all of 2021.”
He revealed that “we send a trade in the morning to the Minsal, requesting that they tell us what the logistics are to maintain the cold chains so that vaccines are not deactivated. It would be very serious if we inoculated deactivated vaccines. There is one that requires -70 degrees and in Chile there are very few places where that temperature can be reached.”
He added that “if this is not the case, vaccines that are viable for Chile should be opted for and that is a decision that must be made soon to adapt the necessary logistics and cold chains.”
Finally, the PPD legislature called “particularly on public authorities to be responsible and not be part of the fake news that has built a set of lies regarding the effects of the vaccine.”
“It is true that there is nothing that is 100% safe, even some acetamoles can produce fulminant hepatitis, but if put on the scale vaccines have saved millions of lives on the planet. Without them, 30% of humanity would not exist. The vaccine is a sign of hope that we can return to normal,” he concluded.
