The Mexican health authority has approved the emergency use of Chinese COVID-19 vaccines from Sinovac and CanSino, Undersecretary of Health Hugo López-Gatell said on Wednesday.
Mexico’s vaccination campaign has gotten off to a slow start and authorities in Latin America’s second-largest economy are hoping to get millions of doses from China to jump-start their efforts amid injection shortages and global delays.
Earlier, CanSino Biologics Inc said that its vaccine against COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, was approved in Mexico for emergency use in people over 18 years of age.
López-Gatell confirmed CanSino’s approval at an evening press conference, adding that the endorsement had also been given for CoronaVac, made by Sinovac Biotech.
“The emergency use authorization has already been granted,” the official said of CanSino. “Same as the Sinovac or CoronaVac vaccine,” he added.
CoronaVac showed an overall efficacy of 50.38% in late-stage clinical trials in Brazil, far from early indications.
On the other hand, in the conference with López-Gatell, 1,328 new deaths related to the coronavirus were reported in Mexico in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number to 169,760 deaths.
11,138 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 were also registered, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 1,957,889.
Mexico is the country with the third highest number of deaths in the world linked to the coronavirus, behind the United States and Brazil and above India.