Peru was shaken on Monday by a scandal sparked by strong non-coronavirus officials on the front lines secretly applying for a Chinese candidate who was later bought, while the government announced it would investigate and eliminate those who received vaccines. .
The scandal has sparked frustration among health workers working amid a health disaster and has affected the government of interim President Francisco Sagasti and former President Martín Vizcarra, who ruled until November, when he was ousted for alleged corruption.
Opposition congressional parties will hold a plenary session on Tuesday to decide whether to set up a commission of inquiry into the secret vaccination of officials after Chancellor Elizabeth Astete resigned Sunday night after admitting in a letter that the end of the month In January, the vaccine was secretly applied because “I could not afford to get sick.”
At the age of 68, at the beginning of January, he managed to buy a million vaccines from the Chinese state pharmacy Sinopharm. A few days before his resignation, the Minister of Health, Pilar Mazzetti, and the two deputy ministers of the Ministry of Health, key in the response to the pandemic, resigned.
Sinopharm conducted studies of the third phase of the experimental vaccine with 12,000 volunteers in the country in September, but sent another 3,200 doses to be given to local medical researchers. These vaccine candidates were secretly applied in October to a privileged group, including then-president Vizcarra, his wife Maribel Díaz and his brother César Vizcarra, as the former president testified on Monday in a video posted on his Facebook site .
The call to participate in the trial was open to any resident of Peru, except those with previous illnesses such as diabetes or hypertension.
On December 31, 2020, China approved the sale of Sinopharm vaccine after the completion of phase three studies with an effectiveness of 79%, according to company data.
The scandal has sparked outrage in a country marked by inequality, where there is no oxygen for thousands of infected people dying at home, as hospitals have no room for more patients and where 43,703 have died from COVID-19, most of them people. without privileges and also officers in the firing line, including 310 doctors, 125 nurses and over 500 police officers.
“They are taking advantage of their positions, it is confirmed that the priority was not the colleagues in the intensive care units who face death 24 hours in a row without eating or going to the bathroom,” Godofredo Talavera, president, told the Associated Press . Monday.of the Peruvian Medical Federation.
“We understand why it took so long to buy the vaccines, there was no rush, they have already been vaccinated,” added the union leader, who has been demanding better salaries for doctors for years.
Interim President Francisco Sagasti, who came to power a week after Vizcarra’s dismissal, told América television the day before that he was “outraged and angry about this situation, which jeopardizes the enormous effort, many Peruvians are working.” to defend the first lines against COVID ”.
The new Minister of Health, Oscar Ugarte, told RPP radio on Monday that President Sagasti ordered an investigation to find out how many officials were vaccinated and also announced that those identified would leave their posts. The results could be known next week, he said.
Sagasti did not ask the chancellor or the resigned ministers, but directed his criticism at the previous administration in Vizcarra, which, forced by a revelation from the local television station Willax, confirmed on Thursday that he and his wife had applied in secret. the vaccine in the presidential palace in October. The former president added on Monday that his older brother César Vizcarra was also vaccinated. Vizcarra was fired on November 9 for alleged corruption in other cases.
Chancellor Astete decided to buy one million Sinopharm vaccines on January 7, the price of which is secret due to requests from the Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical company, and secretly received the first dose of vaccine on January 22 and did not tell their bosses: President Sagasti and Prime Minister Violeta Bermúdez. He made it public only after the confession of former President Vizcarra.
The chancellor’s resignation has also become the tip of the iceberg of a growing scandal, in which it is not yet known how many high-ranking officials were secretly vaccinated using some of the 3,200 additional Chinese doses to the trial Sinopharm sent in Peru.
On Monday afternoon, the Chinese embassy in Lima said in a letter posted on its Twitter account that it had no information “about the identity of those vaccinated” and that it rejected terms such as “courtesy vaccines, donations or benefits used by some media.” communication and defamation to vaccine cooperation ”between Peru and China.
In Peru, Sinopharm was the first pharmacist to begin phase three studies with a vaccine candidate in September using 12,000 volunteers. Only in December, AstraZeneca was the second company to start advanced testing, and in 2021 it started the German CureVac.
There is frustration in the country among the medical staff who received the biggest casualties in their history due to the coronavirus, aggravated by the indifference of officials who for months did not provide them with adequate protective equipment and caused hundreds of infected deaths.
While other countries in the region, such as Brazil and Chile, have added more than a million vaccinated people, only 68,000 health workers have been inoculated in Peru. Last week, groups of doctors and nurses protested in various hospitals across the country because, despite working on the front line against the virus, they were not included in the vaccination list.
“The least we want is our vaccine, because we haven’t received any sun from the state,” Dr. Herlinda Ruiz told reporters on Thursday during a protest in front of a hospital in the capital. “We are exposed to death and sometimes don’t even eat lunch. “.