In the end, López Obrador will not be on Alberto Fernández's tour of the AstraZeneca laboratory

Natasha Niebieskikwiat

02/22/2021 8:47 AM

• Clarín.com

• Politics

Updated 02/22/2021 8:54 AM

An important chapter on Alberto Fernandez's agenda this Monday in Mexico is the visit to the Liomont facilities.

This laboratory works with the Argentine MabXience of businessman Hugo Sigman in the joint production of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine against the coronavirus.

The tour of the establishment located in the mayor's office of Cuajimalpa de Morelos was going to be done together with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

In fact, it was to be the first meeting between the two presidents.

But in the end, the Mexican president got off the course and among the journalists a strange feeling ran that the Argentine delegation completely ruled out.

The logical question is whether AMLO canceled that activity due to his multiple occupations or if he did so because of the uncomfortable situation in which the VIP Vaccination scandal in Argentina puts him.

The Argentine vaccine has wide coverage in the international press and leaves the country badly.

Alberto Fernández's tour of the Liomont will be with the director of the establishment, Alfredo Rimochi.

When Alberto Fernández first met Andrés López Obrador on his trip to Mexico in November 2019, the world was completely different from the one that emerged from the coronavirus pandemic.

And the relationship that both thought

was quickly crossed by the needs of the Argentine stranded in Mexico and vice versa

.

Today they are summoned by the shortage of vaccines against COVID 19, in which both countries established a kind of regional society despite the difference in situations.

Both call for universal access to a vaccine in conditions "fairer" than the current ones.

The association for the joint production between Argentina and Mexico of the AstraZeneca vaccine has a grant of around US $ 800 million from the Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, whom Alberto Fernández will see this Tuesday at the Presidente hotel.

MabXience produces the active ingredient of the vaccine and

in the Liomont it completes the chemical process and packages it

.

Their goal is to produce between

180 and 250 million doses of AstraZeneca to sell to Latin America and the Caribbean

, with the exception of Brazil.

They promise more affordable prices, for example, than Pfizer and Sinopharm.

The process carried out in Liomont has stages: the defrosting of the active principle from Argentina, which arrives in 20-liter containers frozen at minus 65 degrees;

dissolution with the excipients (an inactive substance used to incorporate the active principle);

and packaging in multi-dose vials (10 doses per vial or tube), plus cold chain storage for later distribution.

Clarín

learned

that there were already two shipments of the active ingredient from Argentina for treatment in Mexico.

There are

18 million doses that would be finished by April and no longer by March

as expected.

The Argentine government announced that 20 million of the AstraZeneca vaccine had been guaranteed - not all of them produced in MabXience and Liomont.

In fact, what came first from AstraZeneca are the 580,000 that are produced and marketed from India under the name Covieshield.

Mexico claims to have closed 79.4 million.

Argentina entrusted its vaccination plan to Sputnik V and now Russia recognizes problems to produce it in quantity.

Argentina only has 1.2 million of the 22.5 million it wanted from the Russian drug, due to

exceptional shipments from Vladimir Putin to Alberto Fernández.

In December, AMLO sent the Mexican Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López Gatell, to Buenos Aires.

He was investigating the efficacy and other details of Sputnik V and then announced a purchase of the drug from the Russian government.

However, despite the speech of solidarity in access to vaccines promoted by López Obrador, his administration has already closed several contracts and shipments have begun to arrive in Mexico.

In addition to the 79.4 million it ordered from AstraZeneca, it added 34.4 million doses from the American Pfizer, 35 from the Chinese-Canadian CanSino;

24 million from the Russian Sputnik V, 10 from the Chinese Sinovac and 51.4 million from the Covax platform of the World Health Organization.

With 126 million inhabitants, Mexico is among the countries with the highest number of deaths and infections of COVID (179,000 and 2.4 million respectively).

Also Argentina in proportion to its population.

JPE

Look also

After the controversy of the VIP Vaccination, the Government spent 30 million pesos in cards to register who received the dose against the coronavirus

Coronavirus in Argentina: they authorize the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm and expect a million doses for the next few days