The Guardian :
Peru’s foreign minister has resigned amid uproar over government officials being secretly vaccinated against coronavirus before the country recently received 1m doses for health workers facing a resurgence in the pandemic.
The president, Francisco Sagasti, confirmed that Elizabeth Astete had stepped down and told a local television channel that Peruvians should feel “outraged and angry about
this situation that jeopardises the enormous effort of many Peruvians working on the frontline against Covid”.
The scandal erupted on Thursday when the former president Martín Vizcarra, who was dismissed by Congress on 9 November over a corruption allegation, confirmed a newspaper report that he and his wife had secretly received shots of a vaccine from the Chinese state pharmaceutical company Sinopharm in October. Pilar Mazzetti resigned as health minister on Friday after legislators accused her of concealing information.
Sagasti tweeted that during Vizcarra’s administration, an extra 2,000 doses of the vaccine had been received from Sinopharm and that “some senior public officials were vaccinated”.
The new health minister, Óscar Ugarte, said on Sunday night that Sagasti had ordered the resignation of all officials who secretly received the Chinese vaccine. Ugarte said an investigation was under way to identify officials who were secretly vaccinated in September.
