La Lima, Peru.
The Minister of Health of Peru, Pilar Mazzetti, took off Friday amid a political storm after a complaint that the former president Martín Vizcarra He was vaccinated against Covid-19 months before he began immunization in the country, public television reported.
“Dr. Pilar Mazzetti resigned as health minister after handing over a letter to President Francisco Sagasti,” state television channel TV Peru said on its website, but the government has been silent so far.
Mazzetti’s successor, to be sworn in on Saturday, according to local media, will become the fifth health minister since the pandemic broke out in Peru 11 months ago. He is due to 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 his hospitals, according to an official balance sheet.
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The political storm that led to his Mazzetti quits his job It was let go on Thursday when a Lima newspaper published that Vizcarra had been vaccinated against Covid-19 in October, weeks before he was removed by Congress in a lightning impeachment lawsuit.
The popular former president (2018-2020), who is seeking a congressional seat in the April 11 elections, defended himself by saying that, like thousands of other Peruvians, he had volunteered for the clinical trial of Sinopharm, China vaccine in the country.
Local media had said the Peruvian Congress – the same Congress that removed Vizcarra – was preparing to pass a vote of no confidence against Mazzetti, forcing interim President Francisco Sagasti to replace her.
Mazzetti had told Congress on Thursday that he had “no knowledge” of the former president’s case. “Nor have I been told that Mr. Martín Vizcarra has received a vaccine, he, his wife or any other relative,” he said.
Mazzetti, a 64-year-old physician specializing in neurology, was appointed Head of Health by Vizcarra on July 15, 2020. She had a week-long break in November during Manuel Merino’s short-lived reign and was reappointed as head of ministry by Sagasti.
She made a critical evening on Vizcarra on Thursday by stating that “in order not to skew the results of the clinical trial” of the vaccine, those who had it should not participate.
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Peru accumulates 1220,748 confirmed cases of Covid-19 (+8,439 the last day) and 43,255 dead (+210), according to the Ministry’s balance sheet. Of the total number of infected, 1,130,923 people have recovered.
The number of new infections and deaths quadrupled compared to the last week of December, but without reaching the highs of the second week of August, when Peru faced the worst phase of the first wave.
Mazzetti had headed the Healthcare portfolio in the government of Alejandro Toledo in 2004-2006 and then for seven months in 2006-2007 as Secretary of the Interior in the second term of the late President Alan García.