Mexico receives the largest shipment of Pfizer vaccines against covid

The thirteenth batch of covid-19 vaccines arrived this morning at the Mexico City airport.Daniel Augusto / CUARTOSCURO

More than 850,000 doses of Pfizer's vaccine against covid-19 have landed this Tuesday at the Mexico City airport.

It is the largest shipment that has been received from the American pharmaceutical company since shipments to the country began on December 23.

The Government has announced that the packaging of more than two million CanSino vaccines will be completed next Saturday and that the same process has already begun for 12 million doses of AstraZeneca, which had been delayed in recent weeks due to the lack of key supplies. in the supply chain.

The arrival of this new batch of Pfizer was after nine in the morning and is decisive to conclude with the immunization of health personnel who are in the first line of care against the pandemic.

More than 755,000 healthcare workers have received the first of two doses.

Some 567,000 have already had the second applied, according to the latest official data.

This shipment is enough to complete the vaccination of 25% of public hospital workers and to apply less than 1,000 missing doses to teachers and auxiliary employees in Campeche, the first state where face-to-face classes are expected to resume.

This consignment is expected to be distributed among 38 urban areas of the country, due to the deep-freezing network and the logistics that the distribution of the biological requires.

Authorities have emphasized that 1.6 million doses have been received in the last four days, following the receipt of 800,000 of the Chinese vaccine from Sinovac on Saturday, and responding to the pressures of recent weeks due to shortages and problems of supply that marked the first two months of the year.

"It is the most important number that we have received since the reception of vaccines began," said Marcelo Ebrard, Secretary of Foreign Relations.

The high political costs of the pharmaceutical delays have left their mark on the authorities, who are betting that the local packaging of CanSino and AstraZeneca vaccines will reduce dependence on abroad.

The president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had a virtual meeting with his American counterpart, Joe Biden, on Monday, in which the possibility of the United States sharing part of its vaccine production was put on the table, but the White House closed the door to that possibility for now and replied that his priority is to advance with the vaccination of the inhabitants of his country.

"They will say if it is possible and when," said the Mexican president, who has announced that a new meeting will be discussed next April.

López Obrador has resumed a nationalist discourse, in which he hopes that the local processing of vaccines will give the country self-sufficiency in the fight against the pandemic.

Mexico still expects more than 100 million finished vaccines from abroad, among the agreements with Pfizer, Sputnik V of Russia and Sinovac, in addition to the more that is expected to receive through the Covax mechanism.

The active substance in CanSino and AstraZeneca is also produced outside the country.

"We still do not have enough vaccines, but that is being resolved," the president acknowledged.

Some two million Mexicans have been vaccinated, just over 1% of the population.

Vaccine packaging is going through several important bets in Mexico.

Since August, an agreement was signed with Argentina and the foundation of the magnate Carlos Slim to conclude the production process of between 150 to 250 million doses of AstraZeneca for Latin America.

In the country there are already the equivalent of 12 million doses and it is capital for the Government to unblock the production chain.

It is the vaccine that has acquired the most (more than 77 million doses of that contract) and that other countries in the region also expect.

CanSino's case is a priority because only one dose is required, so vaccination would be easier and coverage would advance faster.

There is an agreement for 35 million doses.

Vaccines packaged in the country are now about to enter a testing phase that lasts between three and four weeks, and whose times cannot be cut, so it is difficult to start applying it in March.

Ebrard has said that Pfizer's next weekly shipment will be next Tuesday with more than 600,000 doses.

A 3 million bulk shipment from CanSino is also expected, with no shipping date yet.

This month another three million from Sinovac are expected to arrive and remittances from Sputnik V will resume, from which only 200,000 doses of the expected 24 million have been received.

No definite date is also 1.1 million doses of AstraZeneca, produced and packaged in India.

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