RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – News that personalities not included in priority groups were immunized led to the downfall of the Health Minister.
Daniel Scioli’s name is on the list released by the new minister appointed to replace him.
Argentina’s ambassador in Brasília, Daniel Scioli, is among the people the neighboring country’s government considered strategic to be immunized, according to reports published in Argentine newspapers on Tuesday, February 23rd.
The subject is referred to as the VIP vaccination scandal in the Argentine media. People who are not prioritized because they are neither healthcare professionals nor at the minimum age to be administered a dose were included in a list that enabled them to “cut” in line.
The news surfaced that a journalist linked to the government, Horacio Verbitsky, said on his radio show that he had been vaccinated.
After the case became public, Health Minister Ginés González García was dismissed.
He was replaced by Carla Vizzotti. One of the new Minister’s first measures was to publish a list of 70 people who were considered “strategic”.
Among the people in the “VIP” vaccination list are ex-president Eduardo Duhalde and some of his relatives, Foreign Minister Felipe Solá, Economy Minister Martín Guzman and other officials, as well as journalists and entrepreneurs.
The Argentine media claim there are suspicions about other names not listed -even activists from the La Cámpora Peronist group.
Argentina president says no law broken in vaccine scandal
Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez said Tuesday that no crime had been committed in a scandal over coronavirus vaccine queue-jumping that forced his health minister to resign.
Fernandez, on an official visit to Mexico, called the incident “reprehensible” but said that the issue of vaccines was “very sensitive” and should not be politicized.
“I’ve read that they’ve made a complaint … Let’s end the nonsense!” Fernandez said as he joined Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at his daily news conference.
“I ask the prosecutors and judges to do what they must,” he said, adding that there was “no such crime” as vaccine queue-jumping under Argentinian law.
Fernandez himself received Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in January in what he said was an effort to encourage others to be inoculated.
“I had to have the vaccine because the Argentine media said that the Russian vaccine could not be trusted,” the 61-year-old said.