Who is to blame for Venezuela's vaccine crisis?

An elderly man sits in a wheelchair at La Providencia San Antonio, a home for the elderly, amid the new coronavirus pandemic in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2021. Most of the elderly residents of the home, which is supported by donations, don't have relatives to come and visit them. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Just 21 % of Venezuela’s approximately 30 million residents has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, the worst rate in South America.

Now the country is dealing with a new stage in the pandemic. The government announced the appearance of the Delta variant in the country and cases have recently increased. In the absence of a coordinated vaccine roll-out, much of the distribution of these vaccines has occurred on the black market.

Located in the western corner of Venezuela, Maracaibo is the second-largest city in the country. Maracaibo’s University Hospital was chosen as the city’s vaccination site during the so-called “first stage” back in March, which lasted all of a few weeks before the hospital ran out of vaccines. We spoke to several staff members at the hospital under the condition of not revealing their identities. The hospital staff cited several irregularities in the vaccine rollout. In some cases, staff members claimed that outsiders bribed workers to include their names on an employee database to make them eligible for a vaccine. The bribes ranged from $150 to $300, a staggering price in a country with a minimum wage of less than four dollars per month. One doctor told us that she paid an “agent” within the hospital to find vaccines for her family members. One day, the agent called and said, “bring your family now.”

By June of this year, as the United States and Europe were nearly half-vaccinated, the Venezuelan government had yet to announce a comprehensive vaccination plan, instead urging citizens to sign up through a public platform thought to be biased in favor of those closest to the regime, or else through the Ministry of Health’s website, in a country with one of the worst internet access rates in South America. 

By July, the vaccine rollout still didn’t have the speed needed to make a dent in the infection, hospitalization, and death rates. The vaccines available were often not the Pfizer and Moderna familiar to Americans. Instead, the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm is prominent on the market. Early in the pandemic, many also received first doses of Russia’s Sputnik V, but not the second. The vaccine seems to have disappeared from the Venezuela market. Of an initial shipment of 10 million Sputnik doses, only a little more than 1.4 million were officially administered, leaving over 80 percent unaccounted for, according to local reporting. 

In many ways, the struggles to obtain the vaccine highlight both Venezuela’s external and internal disputes. Part of the reason for Venezuela’s difficulties in combatting the coronavirus is its difficult relationship with the United States. The U.S. has levied crippling sanctions against the country which affect all aspects of daily life. As of April 2021, the United States has sanctioned individuals directly or indirectly related with the Venezuelan government. These sanctions do not directly affect Venezuela’s abilities to acquire vaccines. Fernando Fernández, professor of Criminal Financial Law and International Sanctions in the Universidad Central de Venezuela and IESA, told us that contingencies derived from the pandemic are “absolutely outside of any control, coercive measure or limitation” regarding sanctions. 

But the sanctions have weakened the healthcare system by making the importation of crucial drugs more difficult. And the fraught relationship has indirectly slowed down any possible humanitarian aid. James Story, the U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, declared in early June that the US will not be donating vaccines to Venezuela (at least in a first round of donations) due to the regime's “lack of transparency.” 

The effects of sanctions, while significant on their own, are multiplied by the country’s egregious mismanagement and corruption.

According to Dr. Freddy Pachano, the director of Postgraduate Studies of Medicine in Universidad del Zulia in Maracaibo, the problems with the vaccines in the country have been self-generated. He points to the government “rejecting proven products such as the AstraZeneca vaccine,” which the Venezuelan government banned despite its efficacy against the disease.  

Much of Venezuela remains blocked politically by the results of the contested 2019 elections. Juan Guaidó, former President of National Assembly, maintains that he is the country’s constitutionally mandated leader. Guaidó’s party is part of an opposition that won the 2015 parliamentary elections—one of the few elections not won by the ruling party in the last 20 years—and is backed by the U.S.  But Guaidó’s influence within Venezuela seems to be waning. Although he has promised to secure resources from abroad to help fight the pandemic, Guaido’s political footing is shaky at best, and his party is tainted by accusations of corruption. The promise of vaccines will most likely be used for voter persuasion in upcoming elections, both by the government and by any factions of the opposition that decide to take part in them. 

Yet both government and opposition speak very little on the subject, instead concentrating their rhetoric in the upcoming elections, prefaced by yet another round of unpromising negotiations. Both parties met in August in Mexico and are set to do so again in early September, in what is the sixth attempt to talk out differences. But these talks are unlikely to be successful: each side has focused on unrealistic preconditions that threaten to scuttle any compromise. Maduro’s government wants U.S. and European economic sanctions to be lifted, but this is outside the hands of the opposition. In turn, the opposition aims at talks leading to new presidential elections, something the government wants nothing to do with.

The vaccine black market did not arise in a vacuum. The economic crisis in Venezuela made the country fertile ground for corruption in the healthcare system.  Many of its features are familiar to anyone who knows the clandestine markets surrounding gasoline, water, food, electricity, mineral extractions, and identity documents, problems that Venezuelans will still have to deal with even if a large percentage of the population gets vaccinated by year's end. In the meantime, COVID-19 doesn’t read the papers; it just carries on unchecked.   

This article was updated on August 31.