Hernando Cevallos defends purchase of Astrazeneca vaccines: “The problem is that the rate of vaccination slowed down”

The issue of the slowdown in vaccination and the early expiration of a large batch of vaccines is drawing the attention of many people in the health sector. When asked about it, the Minister of Health, Hernán Condori, said that the expiry of vaccines is the responsibility of their predecessors in the Ministry of Health (Minsa). On this, former Minister Hernando Cevallos pointed out that the problem is the low rate of vaccination, which causes vaccines to accumulate.

The current Minister of Health had been consulted about a batch of COVID-19 vaccines from the AstraZeneca laboratory, which would soon expire at the end of March. This is after the Comptroller's Office issued a report, reporting that a total of 205,285 vials of AstraZeneca's vaccine purchased to protect people against COVID-19 will expire on March 31.

The bottles are valued at S/ 57 million 46 thousand 215 soles, which would represent a great loss for the State.

In this regard, Condori said that the responsibility lay with the previous Ministers of Health, Hernando Cevallos and Oscar Ugarte, who initially administered the vaccines.

CEVALLOS RESPONDS

However, the former head of the Health portfolio, Hernando Cevallos, said that the vaccines had a contract since 2020 and arrived in the country months late. At that time, the outlook for them was already unfavourable from the beginning and warranted early implementation.

“Actually, it's good to clarify, it seems that the minister does not speak with the slightest precision. In fact, these AstraZeneca vaccines were purchased in December 2020, under not very favorable conditions. These vaccines arrived late and they are also vaccines that have a very short expiration time. This contract was obviously concluded in 2020 and there were no conditions to rediscuss improvements in the contract by Dr. Mazzetti at that time,” said Canal N.

However, Cevallos stressed that the problem with the doses of AstraZeneca that could expire at the end of March is not that they have a short validity time; this is something that was already known about the laboratory. Rather, the problem lies in the recent slowdown in vaccination at the national level.

“The problem we have is that the speed of vaccination in the last month has dropped substantially. So that we have an idea, in 5 months we reached the 50 million doses applied and we did it because we had the brigades active, because there was a decentralization of vaccination. And what happens is that in the last month approximately the speed of vaccine application has decreased by more than 50%,” said the former minister.

“Especially in the last month, where we are vaccinating practically less than 50% of what was being vaccinated. So this causes vaccines, which have a short expiration date, to accumulate, not be applied quickly,” he added.

LOTS WOULD EXPIRE IN MARCH AND ANOTHER IN APRIL

In a conversation with RPP Noticias earlier this March 22, Hernando Cevallos also spoke about these alleged expiring batches. On them, he stated that they are indeed ready to win at the end of March and April.

“There are expiration dates on March 31 and at the end of April, where a significant batch of vaccines expires. Actually, it's not that they're too big lots, because they're about two million. Let's not forget that we, for example, vaccinated almost four million people in one month in October,” he said in RPP Noticias.