Argentina and the “big problem” of AstraZeneca

“We have a big problem called AstraZeneca,” Argentine Foreign Minister Felipe Sola said on Thursday, citing delays in delivering vaccine doses to the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company. coronavirus on the day the Latin American country set a new record for COVID-19 deaths in 24 hours.

The pharmaceutical company has pledged to deliver around 150 million doses of its vaccine to Latin America, through a partnership with Argentine laboratory mAbxience, which undertook to produce the active ingredient, and Mexican laboratory Liomont, which undertook to package it.

Of this amount, 75 million installments are intended for Mexico, another 22.4 million for Argentina and the rest for other Latin American and Caribbean countries.

According to Sola, the Argentine company has already sent to Mexico “over 30 million (doses) of the active substance” as “Liomont has supply problems” in the US.

As he explained, “the US government does not allow vaccines or other supplies to leave the country, which obviously limits the production” of Mexican pharmaceuticals.

The Argentine Foreign Minister also stressed that “in addition to the lack of vaccines, there is also a lack of information: the AstraZeneca has not explained “the delays.

“We regret to confirm a delay in our plan to start shipments (installments) to Latin America earlier, despite the relentless work to speed up supplies,” the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company said on Wednesday after a meeting with the health minister. Carla Vitsotti, with AstraZeneca representative in Argentina.

The company confirmed that it intends to deliver the 150 million installments starting in the first half of 2021.

The Argentine government is eager to expand and accelerate its immunization program, as it announced yesterday that an unprecedented number of COVID-19 patients had died in the past 24 hours (561), while the country’s health system is now on the verge of saturation.

As of yesterday, more than 6.89 million people had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, of which 922,488 had received the second.

The country of 45 million people has officially recorded 63,508 deaths due to COVID-19 at this stage out of a total of 2,954,943 SARS-CoV-2 cases.

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