Following the arrival of new doses of Sputnik V and Sinopharm vaccines, Argentina will be able to complete the vaccination scheme for health and senior staff and will begin inoculation to teachers and non-teachers. In turn, after the transfer of privilege vaccinations, the Ministry took steps to achieve greater transparency. In Carla Vizzotti’s first week as Minister of Health, 904,000 doses of Sinopharm from China were received on Thursday, joined on Sunday by the arrival of another 96,000 doses, to complete the million vaccines announced by the health portfolio. The advent of Sinopharm vaccines will allow teachers to begin to be immunized across the country, the government announced this week. The chief of staff, Santiago Cafiero, explained through his social networks that the Government seeks to “ensure as much face-to-faceness as possible (in schools), safely and carefully, and to achieve vaccination is a very important step”.
This week, Vizzotti had announced that the doses that arrived would initiate vaccination for teachers, divided into five priority groups. “It has been decided to allocate Sinopharm vaccines to school teaching and non-teaching staff, covering a total population of 1,458,000 across the country,” said Education Minister Nicolas Trotta, who stated that “consensus built within the Federal Council for Education” was ratified. According to Trotta, the five groups prioritized to receive the vaccine are those of management staff and teachers of initial level and first primary cycle of special education, in addition to the staff supporting the teaching. Also this Sunday, more than 517,000 doses of Sputnik V arrived from Moscow, a delivery came after the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RIDF) pledged to regularize the provision, following meetings held this week by presidential adviser Cecilia Nicolini in Russia for the normalization of deliveries.
Also on Friday, Argentina’s Richmond laboratory signed a memorandum of understanding with RIDF to produce the Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus in the country, a development involving the Indian laboratory Hetero, which is responsible for transferring the technology. TransparencyTras the VIP vaccination scandal, Vizzotti pushed for a series of measures to ensure transparency in the inoculation process. In this regard, it provided that the quantities of vaccines delivered to each province “be public information and under guidelines of full transparency”. In addition, in recent days, the ministry has launched a strategy to specify the definition of strategic personnel in the three areas of the State and the process for accessing vaccination.
To this end, it decided to create an observatory to “monitor” compliance and “issue recommendations” in this regard, to advance the “transparency” of the entire vaccination process, and invited all jurisdictions in the country to do the same. As agreed, applications will be reported in the Federal Immunization Register, and published on a transparent and regular basis, and an observatory was also set up to monitor and strengthen compliance. In addition, the Public Vaccination Monitor was launched, an online registration that can be accessed from the website of the national health portfolio and that shows in real time all the information about the covid-19 vaccination operation.
