Argentina to secure additional 6 million Sinopharm jabs while eyeing deal with CanSino

More Chinese cooperation is being delivered to Argentina as the country is expected to receive 6 million more doses of Sinopharm vaccine against COVID-19 over the next two months while undergoing trials with CanSino vaccine.

Argentina faces one of the worst outbreaks of COVID-19 in the world and needs to ramp up its vaccination campaign. There are about 40,000 new cases per day in the country of 45 million people – more than in India on a per capita basis.

The country approved Sinopharm's vaccine for emergency use on Feb 21. The first batch of the vaccine arrived on April 25 and the country has already received 4 million doses from Sinopharm, or China's National Pharmaceutical Group Corporation, which entered into a new deal with the Argentine government.

"The arrival of the vaccines is great news. The only way forward is to vaccinate and keep vaccinating everyone," Martin Robla, a 40-year-old employee at a tech company in La Plata, some 58 kilometers from the capital of Buenos Aires, said.

Like most people in the country, Robla is well aware of how slowly vaccinations are progressing. He is convinced of the positive effects of vaccines, which is why he volunteered to participate in vaccine trials carried out in Argentina by CanSino Biologics, another Chinese company that wants to supply the country with vaccines.

CanSino developed the Ad5-nCoV vaccine that is currently approved for use in Mexico and Chile and is currently being tested in phase III trials in Argentina, under the supervision of ANMAT, the Argentine healthcare regulator.

The Argentine government announced in late May that it reached a deal with CanSino to source vaccines.

"We also closed (a deal) last week with CanSino, which is another laboratory, where the Phase III clinical trial was also carried out here, in Argentina, during the last year," Santiago Cafiero, the chief of the cabinet of ministers, told a local radio station.

"As far as Sino-Argentine relations are concerned, it is key to take into account the complementarity of their economies and the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that these nations have maintained since 2014," Diego Marcos, founding member of the Civil Association for Argentina-China Cooperation, said.

Marcos said China's actions in Central and South America are aimed at strengthening and consolidating relations with Latin American countries.

For its part, the Chinese embassy in Buenos Aires stated its commitment to help Argentina beat the pandemic.

"The Chinese Embassy in Argentina, as always, will support the joint effort of both countries to address the pandemic and assist Sinopharm in its close collaboration with the country, in order to elevate the China-Argentina response to the health emergency," said the embassy in a tweet, quoting China's ambassador in Argentina, Zou Xiaoli.

In the meantime, Argentina faces its most critical moment since the outbreak began.

"With these 6 million doses of Sinopharm's vaccine, plus the efforts that are being made with CanSino, there would be a drastic change in the percentage of vaccinated people in our country and maybe we will get closer to the first break in the contagion curve, due to vaccination," Doctor Javier Farina, an infectious diseases specialist and member of the Argentine Society of Infectology, said.

According to Farina, the sourcing of vaccines in Argentina is a very complex issue, given the costs of vaccines and the country's limited foreign currency resources.

"However, there has been very good management with Sinopharm, Sputnik V and AstraZeneca's vaccines. Argentina has vaccinated about 20 percent of its population with at least one shot of the jab, which is very important, compared with some other countries like ours," Farina said.

Compounding the pandemic crisis, Argentina is also dealing with a financial and economic crisis. Inflation has risen to 46.3 percent over the past 12 months.

With almost 3.8 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, Argentina is the second most affected country in South America, behind Brazil with more than 16.5 million cases of the virus. In terms of deaths, with more than 78,000 recorded, the country ranks third in the region, behind Brazil and Colombia.

"We are facing a powerful second wave, with great impact in the major cities, making it necessary to enforce restrictive measures … to keep vaccinating a greater number of people, and avoiding more deaths in our country due to the virus," said Farina.

The writer is a freelance journalist for China Daily.