"Vacuna Gate" in Peru: the attitude of the Sinopharm laboratory sows trouble
A member of medical staff receives a dose of Sinopharm's Covid-19 vaccine on February 19, 2021 in Lima.
REUTERS - SEBASTIAN CASTANEDA
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2 min
An investigation has yet to shed light on all the underside of this scandal which has allowed hundreds of officials and other privileged to be vaccinated in secret and well before vulnerable populations, but it is now that the Chinese laboratory Sinopharm has played a role role in this matter.
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With our correspondent in Lima,
Wyloën Munhoz-Boillot
The Peruvian head of diplomacy, Allan Wagner revealed Monday before the parliamentary commission in charge of the investigation into the
"Vacuna Gate"
that it was indeed the Chinese laboratory Sinopharm which had proposed in Peru additional and free doses.
According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, a letter that the director of international cooperation of Sinopharm sent to the Peruvian ambassador in Beijing on August 7 attests to this.
Three weeks later, Peru responded to this proposal in the affirmative and asked Sinopharm to send 2,000 doses of its vaccine, initially intended for personnel in charge of clinical trials carried out in Peru as early as September.
We now know that these doses offered by Sinopharm were in fact secretly inoculated to several personalities and their relatives.
In other words, they would have been diverted.
But by whom?
This should be determined by the public prosecutor's investigation, the conclusions of which are expected within three months.
A curious practice
These revelations, however, sowed confusion on the role of Sinopharm in this affair.
Indeed, as several experts interviewed by the Peruvian media this week recalled, offering doses of a vaccine in clinical trials is not only not common practice, but goes against the international standards.
But faced with the voices that are rising to denounce the involvement of the Chinese laboratory in this scandal, the Peruvian government calls for caution, because it wants to preserve its diplomatic relations with China, Peru's main trading partner.
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