La Lima, Peru.
The Minister of Health of Peru, Pilar Mazzetti, Resigned Friday amid a political storm following the denunciation that the former president Martín Vizcarra was vaccinated against covid-19 months before immunization began in the country, public television reported.
“Dr. Pilar Mazzetti resigned as Minister of Health after presenting a letter to President Francisco Sagasti,” she said on her website TV Peru, the state television channel, but the government has remained silent so far.
Mazzetti’s successor, who would be sworn in according to local media on Saturday, will be the fifth health minister since the pandemic broke out in Peru 11 months ago. He must take office as the country faces the onslaught of the second wave of the pandemic, with a record 14,333 patients with covid-19 in its hospitals, according to official balance sheet.
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The political storm that led to his Mazzetti’s resignation was unleashed Thursday when a Lima newspaper reported that Vizcarra was vaccinated against covid-19 in October, weeks before he was ousted by Congress in a lightning-fast political trial.
The popular former president (2018-2020), seeking a seat in Congress in the April 11 elections, defended himself by saying he had volunteered at the Sinopharm Chinese vaccine clinical trial in the country, as thousands of other Peruvians.
Local media had said that the Peruvian Congress – the same one that dismissed Vizcarra – was preparing to approve a motion of censure against Mazzetti, which would force interim President Francisco Sagasti to replace her.
Mazzetti had testified before Congress Thursday that he had “no knowledge” of the former president’s case. “I have not been informed that Mr. Martín Vizcarra has received a vaccine, he, his wife or another relative,” he said.
Mazzetti, a 64-year-old neurologist, was appointed head of Health by Vizcarra on July 15, 2020. He had a one-week hiatus in November during the ephemeral government of Manuel Merino, and was again appointed to the front of the ministry by Sagasti.
She made a clear criticism of Vizcarra on Thursday by stating that “in order not to skew the results of the clinical trial” of the vaccine, those who had decision-making capacity over it should not participate.
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Peru accumulates 1, 220,748 confirmed cases of covid-19 (8439 on the last day) and 43,255 dead (+210), according to the ministry’s balance sheet. Of the total infected, 1,130,923 people have recovered.
The new infections and deaths quadrupled compared to the last week of December, although without reaching the highs of the second week of August, when Peru faced the worst phase of the first wave.
Mazzetti had led the Health portfolio in 2004-2006 in the government of Alejandro Toledo and then for seven months in 2006-2007 Interior Minister in the second term of the late President Alan Garcia.