After three months of delay, Health leaves its strategic anticovid reserve half

After three months of waiting, the Ministry of Health has partially awarded its mega-contract of 2,500 million euros, with which the national strategic reserve of anticovid sanitary material will be formed. The framework agreement is divided into 11 lots, in this sense, the ministry has only awarded six of them, which are those that correspond to protective gowns and coronavirus tests. The remaining five lots belong to surgical masks, FFP2, FFP3, gloves and protective glasses, which will be awarded in the coming days, according to Health. This mega contract has been tendered twice because the first time it had to be canceled due to an error in the drafting of the specifications, because of this, plus the complexity of the process, the sanitary reservation was delayed up to almost 100 days. Health published the award yesterday at ten at night, a very rare hour.

The origin of this strategic reserve dates back to March 22, when the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchez, announced it at a press conference. The tender was not published until July 22, four months later. Y it was not awarded until 9 months later, although it is still unfinished. 64 products offered by 52 companies have been awarded.

The purchase has been managed at all times from Ingesa. Precisely, in a press release sent on July 22 by the Ministry of Health, it is specified that this public contract was going to follow an emergency procedure to shorten the deadlines, since they expected that "an important part of the awarded material", was available to health services before the end of September. This speed was also due to the fact that they expected spikes in infections from October.

Almost 100 days late

This public tender carries a series of errors that, added to the great complexity of the process, have ended up delaying the sanitary reserve by almost 100 days. The most serious mistake is that the tender itself had to be canceled at the end of July because the contract was drafted in such a way that they prevented the majority of companies in the national health sector from participating. It would not be until the following month that the contract would be published again, with the error being corrected. This imprecision it cost almost 20 more days lateas the companies had to resubmit their bids.

As already explained by this medium, this mega-contract it was canceled two days after the submission of bids ended, because it excluded a large part of the national companies and the 2,400 million euros were going to be fed to commission agents and intermediaries.

Health is two months late to create its strategic reserve of medical supplies

Alejandro Mata

The Ministry of Health never publicly acknowledged this errorIn fact, Salvador Illa, the Minister of Health, justified that the rectification had been made exclusively to include four Autonomous Communities that decided to join at the last minute, although he clarified that they were going to take advantage of the way to modify the conditions of the specifications and thus facilitate "greater competitiveness and participation."

A total of 155 companies participated in the process, that came to present 475 offers to the eleven lots. From Health they point out that this is the highest volume centralized purchase made by the Spanish Administration in its history. Therefore, they have tried to solve it in the shortest time possible, taking into account the extraordinary amount of products, information and documentation that has been handled.

With the award of this framework agreement, the intention is not to buy sanitary material directly, but rather to commit supply capacities for when they are necessary. However, this tender is the largest of the entire pandemic. The framework agreement is divided into 11 product batches, now only 5 remain to be awarded. According to the ministry, this contract aims to acquire 3.7 billion units of surgical gowns, nitrile gloves, protective glasses, type II and IIR surgical masks, FPP2 and FPP3 protection masks, covid-19 molecular tests (PCR) and kits. extraction.