By Rodrigo Ibarrola.
Citizens continue to show their dissatisfaction with the government’s policies to combat the pandemic. Vaccines arrive in insufficient numbers, those that do arrive are not used as expected because there is no serious effort to get them to the people who need them, while the Government does not make any effort to convince skeptics that vaccines actually work, do not pose major health risks, and can save lives and keep families from economic ruin. In the midst of all this, every now and then, the COVAX mechanism is trotted out as an excuse to avoid responsibility when the pressure rises. The Government has already stated that the main reason for the lack of shots was that “they screwed us with COVAX.” This was echoed by public officials, doctors, and members of Congress, to the point that, finally, the representative of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Luis Roberto Escoto, left the country. Just on June 1, it was published that Senator Blas Llano accused COVAX of being a scam in front of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.