{"id":114692,"date":"2021-02-22T15:51:13","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T07:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=114692"},"modified":"2021-02-22T15:51:15","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T07:51:15","slug":"covid-19-argentina-president-blasts-unforgivable-vaccine-line-jump-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=114692","title":{"rendered":"Covid-19: Argentina president blasts ‘unforgivable’ vaccine line-jump scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Argentina President Alberto Fernandez (right) swears in Carla Vizzotti as the new health minister a day after the vaccines scandal broke<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Argentina’s president Alberto Fernandez blasted his former health minister over an “unforgivable” COVID-19\u00a0vaccine scandal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gines Gonzalez Garcia resigned late on Friday after it emerged that he had helped acquaintances cut in line to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Gines was a great minister, and on top of that I like him. But what he did was unforgivable,” Fernandez told the Pagina 12 daily, which said it had spoken to him on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Politics is ethical, we have to end these types of practices, with the Argentine culture of liveliness, craftiness (and) the management of influences.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fernandez on Friday asked 75-year-old doctor Gonzalez to resign and a day later replaced him with Carla Vizzotti, 48, a former deputy minister responsible for securing the Russian Sputnik V vaccine for Argentina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scandal broke after a 71-year-old journalist, Horacio Verbitsky, announced on the radio that, owing to his long-standing friendship with Gonzalez Garcia, he had been able to get vaccinated in his office ahead of the general population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Argentina began vaccinating its people, only healthcare workers had received the jab until Wednesday, when over-70s in Buenos Aires province were also invited to be immunised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I don’t tolerate things like this, nor do I do things like this. I drive my own car; when I wasn’t a government official and I was invited to skip the queue via the VIP lounge, I refused it. As president, I cannot allow these privileges to be granted,” said Fernandez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Local media say the public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into the vaccines scandal.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vizzotti insisted on Sunday that “in no way was there a VIP immunisation” program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She told Radio 10 that it involved “a small number of people” and that there was no policy of “reserving vaccines for a privileged situation”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vizzotti said that from now on there would be “a plan to monitor the administration of vaccines”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Argentina, a country of 44 million, has received 1.2 million Sputnik V vaccine doses so far along with 580,000 doses of COVISHIELD from the Serum Institute of India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has recorded more than two million COVID-19 cases and over 51,000 deaths. — NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Argentina’s president Alberto Fernandez blasted his former health minister over an “unforgivable” COVID-19\u00a0vaccine scandal. Gines Gonzalez Garcia resigned late on Friday after it emerged that he had helped acquaintances cut in line to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. “Gines was a great minister, and on top of that I like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":114694,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[208],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114692"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=114692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/114694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=114692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=114692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=114692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}