Since the most advanced advances of the different vaccines against Covid-19 were released there were several governors that they tried to advance in negotiations to buy with finances of their provinces the greater amount of possible doses to inoculate the citizens of their districts.
It all started and ended among the last months of 2020 and January 2021.
It was the National Government that informed the leaders, government officials and opponents, that only the National State it would acquire that crucial material to mitigate the advance of the pandemic. The former Minister of Health, Ginés González García, repeated in several meetings of the Federal Health Council (COFESA) that the Casa Rosada would have a monopoly on the acquisition of vaccines.
The ministers that make up that body they had insisted so that it officially empowers its provincial heads to promote national offers to laboratories and foreign governments that went out to the international market at the time to offer, or make known, that they had their anti-coronavirus vaccines. That happened even though their products were, in the third quarter of 2020, in different phases of scientific study and without final approval from foreign control bodies.
This week, surprisingly, and in the face of the vaccine shortage that worries Argentine political authorities, the Chief of Staff, Santiago Cafiero, stated in public statements that No law prohibited governors, the Buenos Aires chief Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, or even private entrepreneurs from acquiring vaccines against Covid-19 if they could do it on their own.
The national strategy suddenly changed.
Strictly speaking, it was not the legal norms that held back the free demand of decentralized health capitalism in Argentina with the countries that manufacture the new vaccines. It had been the Government itself that had ordered the heads of the provinces, and the mayor of the City of Buenos Aires, informally but through dialogues that were repeated in recent months, that They would not be allowed to “go out” into the pandemic world to buy vaccines.
This was confirmed to Clarion qualified official sources and also territorial leaders of the interior who raised their intentions regarding the purchase of vaccines before President Alberto Fernández himself.
The governor of Jujuy, Gerardo Morales, for example, advanced last December in dialogues on this issue with the Chinese ambassador to Argentina, Zou Xialoi. The diplomat was sincere: he could not sell Jujuy any of the vaccines produced in his country because the tacit agreement with the Casa Rosada is that these transactions would only take place from State to State.
“Only now do they authorize us to buy vaccines, but there are no more vaccines. After failure of them (for the Casa Rosada) now they want to throw the ball at us, “complained another governor before a query from Clarion but requesting anonymity to reveal his version.
On January 27, a group of governors asked him on the whole to President Fernández himself that he give them freedom to try to join the difficult goal of obtaining anti-coronavirus vaccines. They argued that each of them knew ambassadors from the most developed countries on the planet because there are investments in their districts of those nations, in addition to the fact that they could get their own resources to pay for the doses they could obtain.
They are power professionals with contacts with medicine laboratories, lobbyists in different capitals of the planet, and operators of all kinds capable of displaying their influences.
According to three sources from Peronism and the ruling party who know the backroom of this story, the governors’ collective insistence on Fernández occurred between January 26 and 27. And the dialogue did not take place in Argentina. It was in Chile, a country to which the President traveled together with a delegation of provincial leaders who raised their concerns.
The sources consulted Clarion stated that those who insisted on trying to purchase vaccines on their own were the governor of San Juan, Sergio Uñac; the one from La Rioja, Ricardo Quintela; that of Catamarca, Oscar Jalil, and that of Salta, Gustavo Sáenz.
The one who reaffirmed that it would only be the Casa Rosada that would negotiate the acquisition of the vaccines against Covid-19 was the still Minister of Health, Ginés González García, who traveled to Santiago de Chile, among other things, because he was the ambassador of Argentina. in that city for many years.
He used the same argument that he had already explained in the COFESA meetings with the Ministers of Health of those provinces, and of other districts, such as the administration of the City of Buenos Aires, whose official in charge of the Health area is Fernán Quirós.
After Cafiero’s statements, the Porteña Headquarters let it be known that he would initiate steps to try to buy vaccines against Covid-19.
Minister Quirós was cautious and declared in the media that it is, at this time of pandemic and lack of vaccines in several of the most powerful countries on the planet, actions that cannot lead to results in the short term.
“The debate over the purchase of vaccines it’s an abstract debate. The vaccines provided by states, such as China and Russia, only do so for nation states; and those that produce private companies have already committed their entire annual production many months ago, “Quirós stated in an interview with CNN Radio.
The Porteña Headquarters effectively began to contact international laboratories that produce inoculations against the coronavirus last Friday. The answer was what Quirós said: nothing until the end of the year, at least.
After the surprise “empowerment” of Cafiero to the provinces and the City to try to supply vaccines to their districts separately to the Nation, one of the laboratories that became the most valued by potential provincial or private buyers is Pfizer, which had initiated important advances with the Casa Rosada to deliver doses of its vaccines to Argentina, a process that came to nothing and without there being a concrete official explanation about the reason for the suspension of a contract that was about to be closed.
Sources from the private health market assured this newspaper that Pfizer would have no interest in selling its vaccines to provincial states going over what has already been said but still working with national officials.
An employee of absolute confidence of Alberto Fernández, the Legal and Technical Secretary, Vilma Ibarra, continues to work with the authorities of Pfizer to close the long-standing deal.
Time will tell.
The different leaders or ministers who returned to seek communication with other international laboratories that produce vaccines coincide: Moderna has not yet sold a single dose outside the United States. Y Johnson & Johnson would be in contact with the Casa Rosada for at least three weeks probing the chance to sell their products but, again, only to the Casa Rosada.
Why did the Government change its position on opening up to the provinces or private companies so that now they do try to buy vaccines?
The President had gotten angry with the opposition on this particular point on April 1: “Help me get vaccines, if the world loves you“, he ironized in an interview with Radio 10, although criticizing in particular former president Mauricio Macri.
Everything happens at a critical time of the pandemic, with the second wave hitting the population, with new restrictions to prevent infections and with a lack of vaccines to mitigate the possible drama.
The Buenos Aires Minister of Health, Daniel Gollán, declared last Friday that if new doses of vaccines do not arrive in the country, his management will have to stop the inoculation next Wednesday.
Sources from the Porteña Headquarters calculate that in the middle of the week they could also run out of stock due to the level of advanced vaccination that was achieved in the Federal Capital.
A version of the Government, always informal, indicates that by April 15 or in the following days they could arrive in the country three million doses of different vaccines against Covid-19: those produced by the Chinese laboratory Sinopharm; the so-called Covishield, similar to those of AstraZeneca but manufactured in India, which would have closed its borders. And, attention: the Casa Rosada you could buy another large batch of AstraZeneca doses from the US government.
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source https://pledgetimes.com/the-hidden-reasons-why-the-government-now-authorized-the-provinces-to-buy-vaccines/
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