Ebrard will travel to Spain within his tour to accelerate the vaccination campaign

Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, at the Mexico City airport, in February.HENRY ROMERO / Reuters

The Mexican Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, plans to travel to Spain this week, where he will hold meetings with various ministers to address, among others, issues related to investment and infrastructure. The visit, as sources from the Ministry of Foreign Relations have confirmed to EL PAÍS, occurs within his tour to accelerate the vaccination campaign against covid-19. Ebrard will meet with several ministers, among them his counterpart, Arancha González Laya, that of Transport and Mobility, José Luis Ábalos, and that of Science and Innovation, Pedro Duque.

On the table of the meetings, the development of the most emblematic work of the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Mayan Train, and the launch of the Latin American Space Agency announced last year by Mexico and Argentina. Ebrard is scheduled to arrive in Madrid on Thursday night and will not officially address issues related to immunization. The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, promised last week to donate 7.5 million doses to Latin America.

The international tour of the Mexican Foreign Minister began this Monday in Russia with the aim of reducing Mexico's dependence on vaccines that arrive from abroad, as part of its purchase commitments or donations that have already been made, for example, by the US Administration of Joe Biden. The foreign minister is negotiating with Moscow a protocol to package and distribute the Sputink V vaccine in the Latin American country.

Mexico has only received just over a million of the 24 million committed to the Russian vaccine so far, and this circumstance adds to other delays that have marked the immunization campaign since its beginning, last Christmas. In this context, Ebrard announced weeks ago an international tour to strengthen his vaccine diplomacy strategy. In addition to Russia and the surprise stage in Spain, the foreign minister plans to visit China, India and, above all, the United States, where the accelerated rate of vaccination would allow the northern neighbor to share the available doses, mainly from Pfizer and Moderna. with Mexico. The country has registered more than 2.3 million cases and 215,000 deaths from coronavirus. Authorities have purchased about 250 million doses for a population of almost 120 million people.So far, only 10% have been vaccinated.

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