[News]Argentina vaccinates against COVID-19 in soccer stadiums

[SougarLord]

 

Buenos Aires (AP) - Argentine doctors and health personnel formed a long line Tuesday in front of the River Plate club's soccer stadium to receive the long-awaited coronavirus vaccine as the government accelerated negotiations with China to receive new doses before the delay in the delivery of the Sputnik V of Russian origin.

 

The “millionaire” club, one of the most po[CENSORED]r in the South American country, lent its facilities so that the Buenos Aires mayor's office can vaccinate health professionals who work independently. On the first day, 400 doses were applied to the 16 posts installed on the basketball court that works under one of the stands of the “Monumental” stadium.

 

"It is a hope, the truth is that every day you get up and you have to adjust to the situation, this is science fiction about the virus," said psychoanalyst Florencia Albanese while she waited to enter the vaccination compartment installed in River. The woman had to stop attending patients in person because her husband has health problems that would be complicated in the event of contracting COVID-19.

 

Argentina has applied about 400,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine -only to health personnel- since late December, when the first shipment from Russia arrived. The figure is well below the five million doses that President Alberto Fernández himself had scheduled for the first month of 2021.

 

The nurse David Mora, who cares for cancer patients at home, muttered angrily upon entering the River because he had not been vaccinated under the pretext that he is not a resident of the capital.

 

“They don't vaccinate me because they tell me that I live in the province and that I have to go to the province. But I work in capital, ”the man complained. “I can't go without vaccinating because if I catch COVID I end up killing all the patients I have. I see young people who are on turn to get vaccinated and those of us who are at risk, over 50 years old, are not vaccinated ”.

 

The mayor of Buenos Aires establishes as requirements to be vaccinated to have a valid national registration and address in the city.

 

"The doses they give us are not yet enough to complete the stage of health workers," admitted the Minister of Health of the capital, Fernán Quirós. “In total, we received 38,000 vaccination schedules ... the medical personnel are 130,000 people, we have to be patient. The process is going to be long ”.

 

The Argentine president raised the issue of the vaccine delay in a telephone conversation he had on Tuesday with his counterpart from the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, who informed him that "vaccine production is being increased so that Argentina receives the agreed volume of vaccines, "according to a statement from the Argentine presidency.

 

However, it is expected that the demand for the Sputnik V vaccine will grow in the coming weeks after this Tuesday the British medical journal The Lancet published preliminary results of a study according to which the drug is 91% effective and has no harmful effects.