Mexico goes to China to accelerate the supply of covid vaccines

A worker with a box of Chinese vaccine from Sinovac, in Ecatepec (Mexico) .Teresa de Miguel

Mexico will strengthen its arsenal against the coronavirus with more vaccines from China.

The Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador will buy another 10 million doses of Sinovac and negotiates the acquisition of 12 million of the Sinopharm prototype, the third Chinese biological that it will apply against covid-19 if it is authorized by the health regulator, Cofepris.

The country received 600,600 new doses of the Pfizer antigen this Tuesday morning, but it has also decided to seek new alternatives in Asian laboratories to accelerate vaccination, which so far has covered only 2% of the target population of 117 million inhabitants since it began last December.

The negotiations and the extension of the contracts are taking place without the Chinese pharmaceutical companies having published complete data on the last phase of their clinical trials.

"It is great news because it allows us to increase the rate of vaccination, which the president is very concerned about being done," said Marcelo Ebrard, the head of Foreign Relations, at the presidential morning conference.

Mexico already had a contract for 10 million doses with Sinovac and expects the new total of 20 million vials to arrive before July, authorities have said.

In the case of Sinopharm, the purchase and delivery times are conditioned on it being authorized for emergency use in the country, a procedure that will begin in the next few days with the health regulator.

It was López Obrador himself who supervised the expansion of the contracts with the Chinese Embassy, ​​Ebrard said.

The great criticism raised by the bulk of specialists is the lack of public information and scrutiny on the effectiveness of Chinese vaccines.

Sinovac has presented a part of its results in humans in

The Lancet

magazine

, with an average effectiveness that ranges from just over 50% - figures from the tests in Brazil and just above what the World Health Organization requires - up to 91% of the data coming from Turkey.

Sinopharm reports 79% effectiveness on average, though it hasn't presented full data from its clinical trials, a reproach from its Western competitors.

CanSino has data in Pakistan of 65.7% efficacy, for example, a figure disputed by the pharmacist itself.

“Publish your data;

it's good for building everyone's confidence, ”Bi Jinquan, former director of the Chinese agency that regulates food and medicine, said earlier this month.

Mexican officials have told this newspaper on other occasions that the approach of each country towards notions of transparency has been an obstacle to overcome in some negotiations with the laboratories.

There is, however, a sense of urgency.

Vaccination in Mexico has advanced at a slow pace and marked by unforeseen events.

The country went about a month, between mid-January and February, without receiving a single vaccine and had to delay the application of the last batch of 800,000 doses of Sinovac for a week because the shipment arrived without the necessary documentation.

Diversification is expected to translate into a greater flow of vaccines in the coming days: three million doses of CanSino will arrive in bulk on Thursday, one million from Sinovac will arrive on Saturday and almost 668,000 from Pfizer next Tuesday.

The challenge will be, the president has recognized, to increase the speed of application.

In nine days it has not been possible to administer more than 100,000 daily doses.

The maximum daily applied was 327,785 doses injected on February 18, according to official data.

That is the goal that López Obrador has set for the team he leads: about 300,000 doses per day.

"This is what we have to do to take advantage of all the vaccines that we have," he insisted.

The president's promise is that by the end of March almost 15 million people over 60 will have been vaccinated with at least one dose.

So far, however, only 1.4 million have been benefited.

Everything indicates that this goal cannot be achieved within that period.

Of the last 800,000 doses of Sinovac, or Coronavac (the trade name), 540,000 have been applied in 55 municipalities across the country.

The Government of Nuevo León announced on Monday that it had to return some 4,700 doses that were useless because they arrived too hot and assured that the States of Tamaulipas, Jalisco and Michoacán had the same problem.

The health authorities have not made any statement on the matter in the press conference on Tuesday, although they have said that the decrease is only slightly more than 2,000 doses out of the 2.8 million injections administered.

The Sinopharm vaccine is already used in 15 countries, including China, and requires two applications.

There are two other Latin American countries that have opted for this vaccine.

Until last week, Peru has received one million doses and Argentina, just over 900,000.

CanSino represents Mexico's main bet among Chinese vaccines.

Among the three biologicals in the Asian country that the Government has tested, it is the only one that has had clinical trials in Mexican territory, the only one that will be packaged in local plants and the only vaccine that needs a single dose.

The purchase of 35 million doses has been agreed since last year, but many have arrived in bulk, which has delayed their application.

The Mexican laboratory in charge of packaging them has already sent the first batches to be approved by Cofepris.

Ebrard's forecast is that they will be put into circulation by the end of March.

Unlocking the vaccines that have arrived unpackaged is crucial, a process on which more than 12 million doses of AstraZeneca that have arrived from Argentina also depend, albeit in another laboratory.

If all the agreements announced by the Government are finalized, Mexico will have more than 250 million doses of six different vaccines in its portfolio.

The challenge will be for them to reach the entire population in the coming months.

Subscribe here

to the

newsletter

of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the current situation of this country