'Vaccine-gate' roils Peru: Politicians, families and friends secretly got COVID shots

[sandensea]

In Peru, they’re calling it ”vaccine-gate” — revelations that the then-president, his wife and other well-connected citizens were secretly inoculated against COVID-19 starting in October, before the Chinese-developed shots were available to the public.

The escalating scandal that broke last week has already forced the resignations of Peru’s foreign and health ministers, among nearly 500 people who received so-called courtesy doses.

The scandal has already resulted in the resignations of the health minister, Pilar Mazzetti, and the foreign minister, Elizabeth Astete.

The vaccine in question was produced by Sinopharm, one of several Chinese companies aggressively marketing COVID-19 vaccines throughout Latin America.

Peruvian federal prosecutors and a congressional commission are investigating how the Sinopharm shots ended up allocated to a privileged few as COVID-19 ravaged the country of 32 million.

The government has released few details about the contract — it is not publicly known how much Peru paid the majority state-owned company — fanning speculation about a vaccines-for-favors scheme that sidestepped non-Chinese suppliers.

At: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-02-18/peru-vaccine-gate-politicians-diplomats-received-chinese-vaccine

Former Peruvian President Martín Vizcarra, former Health Minister Pilar Mazzetti, and former Foreign Minister Elizabeth Astete.

All have been implicated in ‘Vaccine-gate’, in which nearly 500 influential figures and their friends and family received so-called courtesy doses - while nationwide, the number of vaccine doses administered thus far is one-sixth the world average, on a per capita basis.

Nearly 45,000 COVID-19 deaths have been recorded in Peru - over four times the world average, on a per capita basis.