[ad_1]
A few weeks before Christmas, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro made an important announcement about his intentions to fight coronavirus. His vice-president Delcy Rodriguez had just returned from Moscow to report on the comfort and joy of the season about the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.
“We have secured more than 10 million vaccine doses in the first quarter of next year,” Maduro assured the nation. “Our goal is to have vaccines of at least 10m in January, February, March, April or May.”
The reality has proven to be somewhat different, as Maduro’s government is working to get enough doses to cover even the most vulnerable of the local people.
There is no sign that Beijing or Moscow are giving preferential treatment to their socialist ally. Venezuela has received 380,000 doses from Russia – just 3.8% of what the president ordered – and 500,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine from China.
It has included only 1 percent of the population, which is the smallest nation in any of South America. At the rate of this, it will take more than a decade for the herds to gain immunity.
“Neither Russia nor China is offering Maduro the support it would like at this difficult time because they have other priorities,” said Caracas political analyst Dimitris Pantoulas. “Besides, Maduro doesn’t have the money to pay. This is a big problem for Venezuela and Maduro. The country is becoming a secondary priority for Russians. “
Adult he says he is in control of things. Last month, his government surprised many by saying it had found $ 120 million to pay for a dose of vaccines over 11m Covax mechanism, Created by the World Health Organization and its partners to help poorer countries access Covid drugs. That should be enough to include 20 percent of the population.
The cash-strapped government did not say where it found the money, although Maduro said it was “released from the blockade”, suggesting that the funds were somehow freed from sources that were under foreign sanctions. He said the origin of the money will be clarified “in time”.
The ad caught the U.S.-backed opposition as its leader Juan Guaidó, cared for. He also ordered the payment of vaccines, using money from Venezuelan bank accounts in the United States, frozen in the Washington penal regime.
Guaidó’s team was in talks with Maduro’s government – a curiosity in itself – about how vaccines should be paid for, imported and stored, but talks stalled when Maduro said he would not accept AstraZeneca doses. fears of blood clots.
Shortly afterwards, the government introduced a unilateral Covax payment, and negotiations broke out.
“The government stole a march from the opposition,” a Venezuelan political scientist told the Financial Times. “This is a perception, and the government’s handling of the issue left the opposition cold.”
Guaidó insists that the same thing not happen again. Since he has has accepted release $ 100 billion from frozen banks under U.S. control to pay for future vaccines.
Meanwhile, Venezuelan health workers they are increasingly frustrated by drug shortages and the lack of a coherent vaccination plan.
“Where I live, no one has been inserted, and in less than a month a dozen of my neighbors have died,” said Irma Madriz, 62, who has been working in the Venezuelan public health system for 35 years.
“I want vaccines to arrive, but I want them for everyone,” he said when he joined a small group of health workers and opposition politicians who protested in Caracas on April 17 to demand government action.
“With the doses that have arrived so far, at least 300,000 health workers could be included,” said Ana Contreras, president of the University of Nurses in Caracas. “It’s very serious that primary workers are not protected.”
The arguments continue how many Venezuelans coronaviruses have been infected and killed.
The government has registered 192,000 cases and is hardly credible with 2,065 deaths per 2865 inhabitants. This is 74 deaths per million inhabitants, much lower than in other major Latin American nations. In Brazil and Peru, there are more than 1,800 per million.
Last year, the New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch said Venezuela’s official Covid data was “completely absurd and unbelievable.” The University of Washington Research Center, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, recently estimated that the number of new Covid cases in Venezuela is six times higher than the official number.
Meanwhile, Maduro is believing in two Cuban vaccines, Soberano-2 and Abdala, both in phase 3 clinical trials, and a second Russian vaccine, EpiVacCorona.
In a speech before Christmas, the president promised that “Venezuela will vaccinate Russia [Sputnik] here in the laboratories of Venezuela ”. He has since vowed that his country will also manufacture Cuban vaccines.
“Needless to say, there is no trace of this happening,” said political analyst Pantoulas.
[ad_2]
Source link
