In an inexplicable decision, Health Ministry officials presented the vaccine vaccines in medicine boxes that arrived two weeks earlier. Bukele came out to say that boxes with other vaccines were recycled, which was described as an error by the representatives of the medical union.
The Salvadoran government has deployed a large number of soldiers, medical personnel, helicopters, boats, trucks with signs announcing the content to be transferred, cameramen, drones, photographers and journalists to inform the Salvadoran population of the arrival of 20,000 doses of vaccine against COVID-19, on February 17, following a purchase made by the Bukele administration from the Serum Institute of India, according to the communication of the government apparatus.
Although neither President Bukele nor the Minister of Health, Francisco Alabí, detailed the cost of purchasing Covishield vaccines, which is approved by the English laboratory AstraZeneca, they insisted that they are not the product of a donation from the Indian government and noted that these 20 thousand doses were the first to enter the country.
SEE: Doctors find it ridiculous for government to recycle measles vaccine boxes to transport doses of COVID-19
The target population of first-line medical staff to be vaccinated is 50,000, so the number of immunizations does not cover the total population. The government also did not say whether the amount received on Wednesday should be divided by 10,000 for the first dose and the same amount for the second dose.
The government’s social networks were filled with images of medical staff receiving the first doses in different parts of the country in the coming hours.
Detail of the vaccine box against COVID-19 delivered in Santa Rosa de Lima. / Photo courtesy EDH
The beginning of the questions
But on Thursday morning, another version of the arrival of immunizations appeared. A photo, uploaded by the Government Secretariat for Communications on Twitter, showed the labels or vignettes on one of the boxes in which the COVID-19 vaccines were transported. Reading and following the information on the labels, it was possible to know that this box entered El Salvador on February 3.
Hence the question: If the label on the box carrying the Covishield vaccine informs that it entered the country on February 3, why does the government announce its arrival by the 17th?
Journalist Cecibel Romero, who collaborates with Salud con Lupa, identified that one of the boxes delivered on Wednesday night to a health post in Santa Rosa de Lima, La Unión, contained two eggplants.
You may be wondering: according to frontline staff, who should receive the vaccine in El Salvador?
Like the one in Santa Rosa de Lima, other photos posted on social media by the same government in its communications device clearly showed that both eggplants (green and white mentioned), with the same information about flights and origins, were present in other boxes delivered with COVID-19 vaccines in other locations, such as Zacatecoluca, San Vicente, Rosales Hospital and San Miguel.
The first is a green vignette, which indicates that this box was part of 98 in a shipment that departed on January 31 from Mumbai (India) by Air France, and then passed through Charles de Gaulles Airport in France on 1 February and arriving in Miami on the same day, according to the freight registration site afklcargo.com, which reports official information about international flights.
The other clue is in the white vignette, number 406-0229 9253, as shown in the image captured in Santa Rosa de Lima, which is of a transport from the UPS company, which arrived from Miami to El Salvador on February 3, at 10:17 in the morning. This is how it is recorded in the digital system of that shipping company.
The vaccines arrived in El Salvador on February 3, according to the airline
The AirFrance report indicates that the shipment was made of vaccines and specialty drugs, consisting of 98 pieces equivalent to 2,467 kilograms in weight. UPS also indicates that there were 98 boxes.
El Diario de Hoy crossed this information with that of other boxes of Covishield vaccines distributed in other countries in India, where each box contains 1200 vials. 10 doses of vaccine can be obtained from each vial. Therefore, 1,176,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine would have entered that transport.
Government explanation
The official information is that all the 20 thousand doses received on February 17 came from a flight from Mumbai, India, from the Spanish company Iberia.
The journalistic finding provoked a series of negative comments against the government’s activity on social networks, which in turn produced a quick reaction from President Nayib Bukele, where he claimed that the Indian embassy, the Iberia airline, AstraZeneca and PAHO support his version, that the 20,000 doses published on February 17 were the first and only to enter the country.
Bukele confirmed that a batch of vaccines entered on February 3, but that they were not for COVID-19. However, the government has recycled the boxes of these vaccines.
Later, at 11:28 a.m. on Thursday, President Bukele posted a tweet, confirming that there are vaccines that entered the country on February 3, but claimed that they are not vaccines against COVID-19, but vaccines against mumps, measles and rubella.
He explained that the Serum Institute of India is a regular supplier to the Salvadoran government and that “the boxes are recycled and used to protect the smaller boxes,” which explained, according to the president, why one of these boxes was used to mobilize. COVID vaccines 19.
Read also: “I hope the vaccine will reach my family one day”: Silvia was the first nurse to receive the dose against COVID-19 in Opico
In the photo published by the Santa Rosa de Lima Press Secretariat, the box has a sticker detailing that the vaccines must be kept at a temperature between +2 and +8 degrees Celsius, a temperature that is required for AstraZeneca for COVID-19, although it is and a standard temperature that applies to other types of drugs.
At around 1:30 p.m., the office of the Pan American Health Organization in El Salvador (PAHO) posted a statement on its website about the photo of “a thermal box of vaccines that arrived in the country last year. February 3 ”.
PAHO stated that “the image of a thermal box circulating on social networks corresponds to 100,000 doses of measles, rubella and mumps vaccine (MMR) in the country’s Regular Vaccine Program, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India,” which entered on February 3 this year and was acquired through the PAHO / WHO Fund which was revolutionized “, reported PAHO.
In addition, the organization pointed out that there is a thermal box for the transfer of vaccines from one place to another, ensuring the right temperature conditions.
However, it did not include in its statement whether it approves or certifies the recycling of the same boxes for the transport of other vaccines, as happened in this case, according to the Government.