Argentine health minister releases millions of vaccine doses impounded by predecessor
Argentine Health Minister Ginés González García ordered the release on Friday of a total of 12.4 million doses of vaccines that were held in Customs at the international airport outside Buenos Aires during the last months of the former Mauricio Macri administration.
The minister ordered the release at noon of 4 of 49 shipments of imported vaccines impounded at Pistarini International Airport's TCA customs depot - some 1 million doses.
The remainder, he explained, "will be distributed among all the provinces within the next 15 days."
The vaccines had arrived in Argentina as early as June 5 - but had been impounded because the Macri administration refused to pay import tariffs and customs duties of $11 million on an $83 million purchase.
"That was solved with political will and also with the social, economic and health emergency declaration," he explained - referring to a bill signed by newly-inaugurated President Alberto Fernández on December 21.
The shipments included 2 million doses of measles vaccines, impounded despite a measles outbreak. Some 97 cases have been reported since March - the first in Argentina since 2000.
The minister announced that another 7 million doses were being purchased.
González García, 74, was sworn in as health minister when President Fernández took office on December 10. Macri had demoted the Health Ministry to a sub-cabinet level secretariat in 2018 - the first time the country had been without a Health Ministry since 1980, during the last dictatorship.
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Argentine Health Minister Ginés González García (center) during Friday's release of the first million vaccine doses out of a total of 12.4 million impounded since June by the former Macri administration.
The decision to impound the vaccines - apparently taken to help satisfy IMF budget deficit guidelines - came during the country's first measles outbreak in 20 years.
The outbreak in turn took place amid the most severe recession since 2002 - which led to Macri's defeat in elections this October.
"Only an indifferent state could have allowed this to happen," he lamented.
