La Lima, Peru.
The Minister of Health of Peru, Pilar Mazzetti, resigned on Friday amid a political storm following a complaint that former President Martín Vizcarra He was vaccinated against covid-19 months before immunization began in the country, public television reported.
“Dr. Pilar Mazzetti has resigned as health minister after presenting a letter to President Francisco Sagasti,” state television channel TV Peru said on its website, but the government has so far remained silent.
Mazzetti’s successor, who was sworn in by local media on Saturday, will be the fifth health minister since the pandemic broke out in Peru 11 months ago. He must take office as the country faces the onset of a second wave of pandemics, with a record 14,333 patients with covid-19 in its hospitals, according to an official tally.
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The political storm that led to his Mazzetti’s resignation It erupted on Thursday when a Lima newspaper reported that Vizcarra had been vaccinated against covid-19 in October, a few weeks before he was removed by Congress in a flash dismissal.
The popular former president (2018-2020), who is looking for a congressional seat in the April 11 elections, defended himself by saying that he volunteered in the clinical trial of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine in the country, like thousands of other Peruvians.
Local media said the Peruvian Congress – the same one that eliminated Vizcarra – was preparing to pass a no-confidence motion against Mazzetti, forcing interim President Francisco Sagasti to replace him.
Mazzetti had told Congress on Thursday that he “did not know” the former president’s case. “I was not even informed that Mr. Martín Vizcarra had received a vaccine, he, his wife or another relative,” he said.
Mazzetti, a 64-year-old doctor specializing in neurology, was appointed head of health by Vizcarra on July 15, 2020. He had a one-week break in November during Manuel Merino’s short-term government and was appointed again as head of the ministry by Sagasti.
She made a critical evening of Vizcarra on Thursday, stating that “in order not to distort the results of the clinical trial” of the vaccine, those who had the ability to make decisions about it should not participate.
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Peru accumulates 1, 220,748 confirmed cases from covid-19 (+8,439 on the last day) and 43,255 deaths (+210), according to the ministry’s balance sheet. Out of the total number of infected people, 1,130,923 people recovered.
New infections and deaths have quadrupled since the last week of December, although without reaching the highs of the second week of August, when Peru was facing the worst phase of the first wave.
Mazzetti led the health portfolio in 2004-2006 in the government of Alejandro Toledo and then for seven months in 2006-2007 as interior minister in the second term of the late President Alan García.