AMLO announced that 1 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine will arrive this week from India

The Mexican government will receive this week 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca and Oxford University vaccine produced at the Serum Institute of India (SII), President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced this Monday.

“It is very likely that this weekend, before the end of the week, there will be about 1 million doses of AstraZeneca from India.”said the president in his morning press conference from the National Palace.

The president made this announcement by reappearing in public after two weeks of isolation for falling ill with covid-19, a period in which he assures that he continued working to manage the arrival of vaccines in Mexico.

“What is the purpose? That we still achieve in a first dose vaccinate all the elderly in the country at the end of March, we continue to support that planthat we can vaccinate all adults over 60 at the end of March, “said López Obrador.

The AstraZeneca doses arriving from India are in addition to the 77.4 million units that the Government negotiated directly with the British pharmaceutical company and that will be packaged in Mexico to distribute to the rest of Latin America.

Mexico also has agreements to access 34.4 million doses from the US Pfizer, 35 million from the Chinese CanSino, 24 million from the Russian Sputnik V, and 51.5 million from the COVAX platform of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Photo: Presidency of Mexico. 

The president reiterated that during his illness he closed the negotiation of Sputnik V in a telephone conversation with the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

He also indicated that he spoke with the Chinese ambassador to Mexico, Zhu Qingqiao, for the agreement with CanSino, and that he negotiated with Pfizer to resume shipments of the drug between February 10 and 18.

Mexico was one of the first countries to begin vaccination against covid-19 on December 24 with the promise of getting 1.4 million doses of Pfizer and BioNTech to immunize all front-line healthcare workers in January.

(PHOTO: ALFREDO ESTRELLA / AFP) 

But so far Mexico has only applied little more than 710,000 units because the US pharmaceutical company suspended deliveries in mid-January to renovate its plant in Belgium.

“There is no shortage of resources, there is no shortage of money, If we have to pay today 10, 20, 30, 100 million dollars for vaccines, we have the money in dollars so that it is paid immediately ”, gguaranteed the president.

The lag in vaccination occurs while Mexico is the third country in the world with the most deaths, with 166,200 deaths and close to 1.92 million confirmed cases.

Despite his infection, the head of state defended his decision not to be vaccinated until it is his turn.

“An authority has to set an example. It is not possible that because he is president and has the most important position in the Republic, I acted in a circumstance like this with ‘influentialism’, setting a bad example ”, he argued.