Only five hours had passed since AstraZeneca's 870,000 Indian vaccines landed in Mexico when their urgent distribution across the country began, accompanied by an extensive propaganda session involving several secretaries.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador began a plan led by the Army in which the most remote areas of the country have been prioritized.
The 870,000 doses left this Sunday on eight routes that will cover remote populations in all the states of the country.
The objective of the Mexican Government is that by mid-April the almost 16 million people over 60 years of age will be vaccinated.
According to the president, the elderly in 330 municipalities will be vaccinated.
"In this first stage, the decision was made to start in the most remote, marginalized municipalities with the poorest population in the country (...) where there is not enough health infrastructure to deal with covid cases," said López Obrador this Sunday.
"The next installment includes other municipalities, also from the 32 states, until all older adults are vaccinated," he added.
The vaccination process will not last more than two months, according to the president's calendar.
"Preference is given to older adults because vaccinating them guarantees a reduction in deaths from covid of 80%," he argued at a press conference in Oaxaca, together with the state governor, Alejandro Murat, foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard and the secretaries Defense and Health.
“We are going to start in the communities, in the most remote towns, even in Mexico City it will start in Milpa Alta, in Cuajimalpa, in Magdalena Contreras.
Here in Oaxaca it is going to be the Cañada area;
in Puebla, in the Mixteca area, the Osorio plan, the entire region where there are more than 30 marginalized, poor municipalities.
So we are going to move forward and that is why we calculate that by mid-April we would have the entire country covered, and vaccinated at least with the first dose, which is already enough protection, to 15.717.170 million older adults ”, he insisted.
Another priority will be health personnel.
According to the president, "most" of hospital workers treating covid cases have already received the first vaccine.
The doses of Pfizer that arrive on Tuesday "will be used in their entirety to finish vaccinating all health personnel," he said.
After older adults and medical personnel, it will be analyzed who will continue in line, among them will be teachers, dentists, chronically ill or athletes who will attend the Olympic Games, the president pointed out.
The Secretary of Defense, Luis Sandoval, has been in charge of detailing the eight routes that the AstraZeneca vaccines will follow and detailed that nine planes and helicopters will be used to cover them.
They will be covered, the general has given as an example, territories in Baja California, Sonora and Coahuila, which cover very long distances.
Sandoval has highlighted the land routes, which will be applied in the three municipalities of Mexico City to which 87,000 doses will arrive.
For his part, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard thanked India for the effort and has said that the Asian country will send 1.2 million more AstraZeneca vaccines in March as part of the agreement reached by both governments and the pharmaceutical company.
"India has 1,300 million inhabitants and they require vaccines and, nevertheless, the Government gave its consent for 870,000 to be sent to Mexico today and 1.2 million in the month of March and we will never forget that," he said. .
The shipment that arrived this Sunday was the largest shipment since 766,000 doses of Pfizer were received on December 23.
"With the arrival of AstraZeneca, this vaccine will also be applied, which is a different technology," said the Chancellor.
The Mexican president has proposed that the vaccine being developed in Mexico, still in its embryonic stage, be called Patria.
At the moment the Mexican vaccine only has a name since the three necessary research phases are still missing.
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