Argentina launches Covid-19 vaccinations with Russia's Sputnik V shots: govt

Argentina on Tuesday launched a Covid-19 vaccination campaign with the Sputnik V shots developed by Russia, the government said. The first country in the Americas to use Russian made vaccine against the pandemic.

The vaccination drive began simultaneously around the country with frontline healthcare workers given priority, Health Minister Gines Gonzalez Garcia said. She spoke at Posadas Hospital in Buenos Aires, where a doctor named Flavia Loiacono became the first in the country to get a Covid shot.


Argentina is now the fourth country in Latin American to launch a vaccination campaign, after Mexico, Costa Rica and Chile. "We are going to have to keep taking care of ourselves. It will take a few months for the vaccine to have a widespread effect," the minister said.

A first shipment of 300,000 doses of the Russian product arrived here on Christmas Eve. It requires people to get two shots.

Another 19.7 million doses are supposed to be delivered in January and February. Argentina has also signed an agreement to obtain doses of the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, and is negotiating with Pfizer-BioNTech.


The pandemic has killed nearly 43,000 people in Argentina.

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AFP

Argentina confirms first coronavirus case: health ministry

Spain reports first coronavirus death: official

As Argentina reported  a confirmed case of Coronavirus, Spain announced first death from the China's virus that has spread to more than 70 countries.

In Madrid, Spanish officials reported the country's first coronavirus death on Tuesday, a man who died last month in the eastern region of Valencia.

"It is a patient who died on February 13," regional health officer Ana Barcelo Chico told journalists, adding that post-mortem analysis had come back "positive".

Argentina Health Minister Gines Gonzalez Garcia on Tuesday confirmed the South American country's first case of the fast-spreading new coronavirus. Reuters reported.

According to the reports, The patient, a 43-year-old man, arrived in Argentina on March 1 after a two-week trip that included northern Italy, another health ministry official said. Northern Italy is grappling with one of the world's worst outbreaks of the respiratory illness outside of China.

Health Access Secretary Carla Vizzotti said Argentina is still in the containment stage in dealing with the virus. "Containment means that we will work on the early detection of possible cases, confirming or ruling them out."

The first confirmed case of the coronavirus in South America was reported in Brazil on Feb. 26.

The illness, called COVID-19, first emerged in central China late last year. It has now spread to nearly 80 countries including Mexico, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, with the worst outbreaks outside of China in South Korea, Iran and Italy.