Buenos Aires.- A scandal around the COVID-19 vaccination process broke out this Friday in Argentina after it became known that several people were vaccinated against this disease in a privileged way, so the president, Alberto Fernández, asked the minister of Health, Ginés González García.
Hours later, the former minister made his resignation public through a letter, and the Argentine Government confirmed that the up to now Deputy Minister of Health, Carla Vizzotti, will be the one who will succeed him in charge of the Health portfolio and will assume the position this Saturday .
THE FORMER MINISTER SPEAKS OF WRONG AND MIS UNDERSTANDING
González García assumed “responsibility for the mistake” that happened and considered what happened to be a “misunderstanding”, but reaffirmed that “vaccinated people belong to the groups included” in the current campaigns.
The former minister, close to Fernández, also pointed out that there was an “involuntary confusion” on the part of his “private secretariat” when summoning those people while he was out of Buenos Aires.
The scandal originated from the journalist and head of the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), Horacio Verbitsky, 79, making it known on the radio program in which he regularly intervened that he had been vaccinated inside the facilities of the Ministry of Health after speaking with his “friend” González García.
“I called my old friend Ginés González García, whom I have known since long before he was a minister, and he told me that I had to go to the Posadas Hospital. When I was about to go, I received a message from his secretary, who told me that a team of vaccinators from Posadas would come to the Ministry, and to go to the Ministry to give me the vaccine, “Verbitsky, 79, revealed to radio El Uncover .
SCANDAL IN SUNDAY ABOUT VIP VACCINES
After those statements in which he revealed that he was vaccinated without following the official channels for it, a controversy started on social networks, where many people repudiated Verbitsky’s words and the so-called vip vaccination to which he resorted.
Various media indicated that there is a list of other people close to power who also used their privileges when getting vaccinated, although so far only one deputy has confirmed to have been vaccinated by means other than the official one with doses of the Russian preparation Sputnik-V .
It is the official legislator Eduardo Valdés, 62, who justified on the radio station Radio con Vos that he was vaccinated at the Ministry of Health “according to a protocol, to an invitation.”
As he explained, the president included him in an official delegation to travel to Mexico next week and for that reason he was “summoned.”
The scandal occurred just one day after the province of Buenos Aires, where the aforementioned hospital is located, was the first to deploy the coronavirus vaccination operation for those over 70 years old, after more than a month and a half in the one that only vaccinated health personnel throughout the country.
Both people confirmed that the vaccine was injected within the Ministry and not in a hospital, as it should have been by Argentine protocol.
VERBITSKY, A PERSON WHOSE INFLUENCE GOES BACK DECADES
With regard to Verbitsky, who in his youth was a member of the Montoneros guerrilla (Peronist left), has a long history in the media, he acknowledged this Friday that a few months ago he said that he “preferred to wait a while” before getting vaccinated, but he finally decided to do it and therefore contacted his “old friend”, the minister.
The director of the El Uncover program, Roberto Navarro, indicated on his Twitter account that he decided to do without Verbitsky from now on, while the CELS workers rejected in a statement through their social networks “this or any other action or privilege “On the part of its president, at the same time that they stated that Verbitsky was vaccinated” outside the established system, through a chain of favors. ”
THE OPPOSITION POINTS TO A CRIMINAL COMPLAINT
From the largest Argentine opposition coalition, the deputy of Together for Change Graciela Ocaña said on Twitter that the resignation of González García “is not enough” and called for the resignation of “all the secretaries” of the Health portfolio because “they knew of the existence of the vip vaccination ».
In television statements, Ocaña, who before being an opponent of Peronism was Minister of Health with Cristina Fernández (2007-2015), said that this case could lead to a “criminal complaint” for “influence peddling.”
For her part, the president of the Republican Proposal, one of the parties that make up Together for Change, Patricia Bullrich, added that “the K (Kirchnerists) use the vaccine for their own benefit and make it public to laugh at everyone.”
«They are an oligarchy that took over an incapable president. Our most energetic repudiation and a serious challenge to an impotent Minister who must resign ”, expressed Bullrich.
So far, Argentina – which has about 45 million inhabitants, about 7.2 are over 60 years old – has received 1.22 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine (half of the first component and half of the second), far of the 5 million initially planned for January and of the 14.7 million signed for February.
This week, 580,000 doses of the vaccine from the Serum Institute of India arrived in the country, thanks to technology from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.