Earlier this month, Peru's health and foreign ministers quit and its former president was placed under criminal investigation after reports of hundreds of Peruvian officials and others receiving vaccine doses outside clinical trials and before the national immunisation program began.
In Argentina, well-known local journalist Horacio Verbitsky said he had received a shot after approaching the minister.
“I called my old friend Ginés González García and he told me to go to the Posadas Hospital,” Verbitsky, who is in his seventies, told radio station El Destape.
Since December, Argentina has been using Russia's Sputnik V vaccine to inoculate front line health workers, though deliveries have lagged far behind what it initially hoped for. The country has started inoculating some people over 70 this week but appointments are scarce and people are supposed to follow a procedure that involves registering first.
As of Wednesday in Argentina, about 250,000 people had received two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine. The country of around 45 million people has confirmed over 2 million coronavirus infections and 51,000 deaths.
Argentina's state news agency said Carla Vizzotti, a current vice minister in the health ministry, would be the next health minister, though there was no official confirmation.