López Obrador seeks to accelerate the vaccination rate with the support of the Army

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has recognized this Wednesday the lack of personnel and troops available to apply the number of doses of vaccines that the country has.

And he has announced that the Army and Navy will intervene with their medical and logistics personnel to try to accelerate the rate of immunization.

As of Tuesday, the vaccinated population numbered 5.6 million people, but there are still more than four million doses that have not been applied.

The goal of vaccinating 117 million people at a rate of about 200,000 daily doses - according to information from the Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López-Gatell - would be reached at least within a year and a half.

Some leading countries in vaccination, such as the United States, have announced that herd immunity (around 70% of the population with at least one dose) can be achieved in August, with a rate of more than two million vaccines applied each day.

The latest figures on available doses and others not yet packaged that the Undersecretary of Foreign Relations, Martha Delgado, provided this Wednesday, point to a surplus of 4.1 million available vaccines and also another 17 million doses that are still to be packaged from CanSino ( 5 million) and AstraZeneca (12 million).

The latter suffered delays in the process since their arrival in Mexico due to the lack of key inputs in the supply chain.

So while Mexico vaccinates at a rate of 200,000 doses a day, at least four million doses are waiting in the refrigerators that are not being applied due to lack of foresight and available personnel.

A race against time that the Mexican government seeks to stop with its greatest allies: the military.

The Ministry of Defense and the Navy, the great beneficiaries of the López Obrador Administration, which has been entrusted with the management of the ports (Marina) and the construction of airports and also the management of infrastructure megaprojects, such as the Mayan Train , they now have the opportunity to fulfill one of their duties for which they were specially created, logistical support in a crisis.

The increase in the rate of vaccination has been announced not only because of the surplus of available doses and the lack of current capacity, but also because of those expected to arrive this weekend.

López Obrador has announced that to those four million will be added another 2.7 million more from AstraZeneca that the United States Government will send packaged between Sunday and Monday.

López-Gatell already warned this Tuesday that they expected the rate to increase in the coming weeks with the vaccination of larger cities: "Up to 300,000 doses a day, perhaps 500,000 or 600,000."

The Undersecretary of Health blamed this difference between what we have and what is applied to remote places where the vaccine is being administered, places “that have not had public services, nor transport, nor communications, rural areas with complicated orography. where it takes longer to arrive ”.

A quarter of the 15 million older people live in more or less remote rural areas.

They also argue that the States still do not report on the health personnel who are on the front line of covid-19.

The immunization campaign will intersect with the electoral campaign.

On June 6 there are state elections (15 governors are elected), the federal Chamber of Deputies is renewed and another 2,000 local positions are elected, in what will be the largest elections in the history of Mexico.

Thus, the acceleration of vaccination has also become one of the main campaign objectives in every corner of the country.

The entry of the Army and the Navy will be key especially after the Easter holidays: no president in the middle of the electoral campaign will want to face a third wave.

"Now the number of infections is going down, but we have to hurry to vaccinate so that if there is a regrowth, we get vaccinated especially the elderly," said López Obrador this Wednesday.

Subscribe here

to the

newsletter

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