A man goes to the vaccination modules where the application of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines against the coronavirus is carried out at the facilities of the Regional Military Hospital of Specialties in Monterrey, Nuevo León.Miguel Sierra / EFE
With fewer vaccines and the leadership of the program headless.
This is how the mass vaccination plan in Mexico started this Monday, which had planned the distribution of about 440,000 doses throughout the territory.
Miriam Veras Godoy, the head of the program, submitted her resignation on Sunday.
The health authorities assured that the resignation of the official responds exclusively to personal reasons, although the guidelines of the operation have been surrounded by controversy in recent weeks.
Also on Sunday it was known that the pharmaceutical company Pfizer cut the batches planned for this month in half.
The president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on Monday justified the cuts to his main supplier by announcing a UN decision that seeks to reserve vaccines for the poorest countries that have not been able to access purchases.
Mexico's initial plan was to end January with a total of 1.4 million doses of Pfizer, a sufficient volume to cover the first group: the approximately 750,000 people make up the health personnel including doctors, nurses, orderlies, cleaners and anyone else who be on the front line against the disease.
With the lab cuttings it will be difficult to meet the initial calculations.
“Pfizer is rethinking its deliveries, it had been contemplated that 400,000 doses would arrive tomorrow, but it wants to limit it to half.
They are doing this all over the world because the UN wants vaccines to be offered to countries that have more difficulties.
That is why it is reducing delivery ”, López Obrador himself recognized this Monday.
In addition to the mention of the UN, the Mexican president has also made reference to the adjustments in the production of Pfizer.
"This they are doing worldwide: reduce their supply as soon as they prepare their plants and produce more."
The drop in shipments from the US drugmaker and its German partner BioNTech have already sparked angry criticism from some European countries.
Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia formally complained to the European Union last week about delays and cuts in vaccine shipments, calling the situation "unacceptable and damaging to the credibility of the entire vaccination process." .
The pharmaceutical company has acknowledged that its distribution system has been affected by changes in its plants aimed at relaunching production.
They expect the cuts to continue during the end of January and the beginning of February, to rebound with "a sharp increase in the doses available during the end of February and March," according to a statement from the laboratory itself.
With regard specifically to Mexico, once production is fully resumed, the Government will receive 700,000 vaccines weekly, according to the
Bloomberg
agency
.
In parallel, Mexico is advancing negotiations with the rest of the vaccine suppliers.
López Obrador assured this Monday that the agreement with a Russian pharmaceutical company is imminent, just for the Federal Commission for the Protection of Sanitary Risks (Cofepris) to give the go-ahead.
An agreement has already been established with the Chinese pharmaceutical company CanSino for the reception "from January to March" of eight million doses and 9,000 volunteers have already applied it, as well as that of Janssen, which will receive 2,000 volunteers.
Similarly, there are also agreements already signed with AstraZeneca and the Covax platform of the World Health Organization (WHO).
The roadmap is that as the immunization concludes, the next group to be vaccinated this January will be people over 65 years of age and then the population of any age that presents synergistic diseases with covid -19, such as hypertension, obesity or diabetes, very pronounced in Mexico.
The vaccination schedule and parameters have been, in any case, surrounded by controversy.
The president had to come to the fore last week after the unrest among the health personnel of private centers and their supposed relegation when it came to being vaccinated: “Here public and private are not distinguished, both are colleagues who have an increased risk from being exposed to the virus ”.
During these weeks, the vaccination of a good number of politicians has also been controversial.
In this case, it was the Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López-Gatell, who settled the controversy by confirming that they are also included in the vaccination plan, as well as medical personnel and the elderly.
The official reason for the departure of the person in charge of the program has not pointed to any of these issues.
Although, beyond “personal reasons”, the explanations of Carlos Cortés Alcalá, director of Health Promotion, during the press conference after his announcement focused on the complexity of the internal organization of the plan to apply vaccines against the covid and in the description of the chain of command.