Vaccine secretly diverted: vaccination scandal: Argentine minister resigns

Vaccine secretly diverted
Vaccination scandal: Argentine minister resigns

The Argentine Minister of Health resigns from his post after serious allegations. The politician is said to have diverted thousands of corona vaccine doses and reserved them for allies. A journalist made the scandal public.

Argentina's President Alberto Fernández has fired his health minister following a scandal over preferential treatment for political allies in vaccinating against the coronavirus. "At your express request, I am submitting my resignation as health minister," wrote the previous head of department Ginés González García in a published letter to the head of state. State Secretary Carla Vizzotti is to take over the ministry, as the presidential office announced.

The scandal was triggered by the pro-government journalist Horacio Verbitsky, who told a radio broadcast that after a phone call with González García he had been summoned to the Ministry of Health to be vaccinated. Due to his age, job and personal risk, it would not have been his turn yet. In total, the ex-minister is said to have reserved 3,000 vaccine doses for personal use. The powerful union boss Hugo Moyano with excellent connections in government circles and the demimond is said to have been vaccinated together with his wife and his 20-year-old son.

In Argentina, the Russian vaccine Sputnik V is mainly used, and the first doses from the pharmaceutical company Astrazeneca have recently arrived. So far, just 390,000 of the nearly 45 million Argentines have been vaccinated. Since the beginning of the corona pandemic, a good two million people in the South American country have been shown to have been infected with the virus. 51,000 patients have died in connection with Covid-19.

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