Mexico will receive one million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from Argentina

The Undersecretary of Prevention and Health Promotion, Hugo López Gatell.

Mexico – Mexico will receive one million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from Argentina on Wednesday, the undersecretary of Health and government strategist against covid-19, Hugo López-Gatell, reported on Monday.

“This Wednesday, at dawn, we will receive the first of these shipments in bulk and it will be approximately one million doses since due to the operating conditions in the plant it may be a lower quantity,” said López-Gatell at the press conference newspaper about the coronavirus.
The Mexican expert said that the vaccine is produced in Argentina and is exported, in this case to Mexico, because there is an agreement between two individuals for the Liomont pharmaceutical company to “fill and finish the bottles that will be used for the application of the vaccine. vaccine”.
He recalled that this first shipment will arrive on Wednesday and will be packed at the end of March.
The high Mexican official specified that this million doses “are for different operations of the establishment of the” Liomont plant in Mexico “and are not necessarily predestined or pre-labeled for any part of the supply.”

He recalled that Liomont’s production, in the agreement with AstraZeneca, includes the supply of the purchase in Mexico for a total of 77.4 million doses and for Latin America 200 million doses have been considered for different countries in the region.
Hours earlier, the Mexican Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, confirmed that the Argentine health authorities would send, as of these days, the active principle of the AztraZeneca vaccine to start the final packaging process in Mexico, although he referred to an Argentine publication that mentioned that the equivalent of 6 million doses would be shipped.

Mexico has agreements for 34.4 million doses from Pfizer, 77.4 million from Britain’s AstraZeneca, 35 million from CanSino and 34.4 million from the Covax platform of the World Health Organization (WHO). It is also considering the purchase of 24 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V.
This Monday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that Mexico agrees to reduce requests for the dose of the Pfizer vaccine so that the UN receives an amount and can deliver it to poor countries.
CHANGES IN VACCINATION PLAN
Faced with the decision, López-Gatell pointed out that Mexico’s vaccination goals will be affected in the second application for health personnel and older adults.

Mexico intends to immunize in the first stage all health personnel, some 700,000, and in the second, some 15 million elderly people.
He specified that the shipments scheduled for January 26 and February 2 and 9 will not arrive and the next shipment with new doses will arrive in Mexico on February 15.

“Of the 439,725 doses of the Pfizer vaccine that were scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, only 50% will arrive, about 219,350 doses,” explained López-Gatell, noting that half will arrive in Mexico City and the city of Monterrey, north from the country.
Mexico seeks to vaccinate its almost 130 million inhabitants with a plan that is already underway and whose completion is scheduled for March 2022, with an investment of 32,000 million pesos (about 1,600 million dollars).
This Monday, Mexico reported 8,074 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours for a total of 1,649,502 confirmed cases, reported authorities from the Ministry of Health.

In addition, 544 new deaths were recorded, bringing the number of fatalities to 141,248.
With these data, Mexico ranks thirteenth in the world in the number of infections and remains the fourth country in the world with the most deaths from the pandemic, behind the United States, Brazil and India, according to the US Johns Hopkins University.