[ad_1]
After criticism of the Government for having only 3,000 initial vaccines, Mexico received this Saturday a second shipment of 42,900 doses of Pfizer with which next Monday the vaccination of medical personnel in the capital will continue and will also be extended to health workers in the north of the country.
“We are complying with the presidential instruction to bring the vaccine to Mexico in an early and timely manner,” celebrated Daniel Millán, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Relations, on the runway of the capital airport where part of the second shipment arrived.
And is that while the European Union (EU) prepares to start vaccinations on Sunday, Mexico has already received a second batch for its vaccination plan, which last Thursday was the first in Latin America to start.
FIRST VACCINES FOR THE NORTH
From the Pfizer plant in Belgium, 42,900 doses landed in Mexico this Saturday – 34,125 in Mexico City and 8,775 in northern Monterrey (Nuevo León) -, in addition to the 3,000 that arrived last Wednesday in the capital.
The doses from Monterrey will be transferred to the state of Coahuila to kick off the vaccination campaign in northern Mexico next Monday.
That same day, vaccinations will be resumed in Mexico City, the place most affected by the virus.
The Ministry of Health announced that those vaccinated will be members of the medical, nursing, chemical, ambulance, cleaning and hygiene personnel assigned to some of the 1,000 hospitals in the country that treat patients with covid-19.
It is a light of hope for Mexico, which with 1.4 million infections and 121,000 confirmed deaths is the fourth country in the world with the most deaths from the pandemic, behind the United States, Brazil and India.
Last Thursday, the first 3,000 vaccines were supplied to medical personnel at the General Hospital of Mexico City and in two military sites in nearby Querétaro (Querétaro) and Toluca (State of Mexico).
Specialist nurse María Irene Ramírez, 59, was the first person in Mexico to receive the Pfizer vaccine.
Minutes later, vaccinations began in Chile and Costa Rica, while Argentina received a shipment of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.
However, the opposition criticized that the doses were few compared to the figures that had been handled of about 150,000 vaccinations before the end of December.
To which the Government replied that small shipments will be received intermittently to “calibrate” the complex logistics of the vaccines, which are kept by the Armed Forces in containers with dry ice that keep them at -70 degrees Celsius and have chips. geolocation.
In addition, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador attributed to the pharmaceutical companies and the enormous international demand any delay that may occur in the arrival of vaccines, since the Government already has the “budget” to buy all the necessary ones.
IMMUNIZE MEDICAL PERSONNEL
The priority objective of the López Obrador government is to immunize first the health workers who care for Covid-19 patients and then the rest of the medical personnel, which is around one million people in Mexico.
A study by Amnesty International warned in September that Mexico was the country in the world with the most doctors killed by covid-19, registering 1,320 deaths.
“Protecting those who have protected us is strategic and fundamental,” the director of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), Zoé Robledo, claimed this Saturday, upon receiving the new shipment of vaccines.
The official defended that the Pfizer vaccine, which requires two doses per person, offers “full safety” and said that the health personnel selected for the vaccination are “very happy and optimistic.”
And it is that they are moments of special exhaustion for Mexican health, especially in the capital, which is going through a critical moment of infections with a hospital occupation of more than 80% of the beds.
In fact, together with the vaccine, these days doctors from the rest of the country are arriving in the capital to avoid saturation of the hospitals.
The government expects to have vaccinated virtually all healthcare personnel by the end of January, when according to its estimates 1.4 million doses of Pfizer will have been received in weekly shipments.
Once vaccinated, Mexico wants to immunize the rest of the population between February 2021 and March 2022 for free and gradually, according to age and chronic diseases.
To do this, it has pre-purchased 34.4 million vaccines from the American company Pfizer, as well as 77.4 million from the British AstraZeneca and 35 million from the Chinese CanSino, although these two have not yet been authorized for use in Mexico.
[ad_2]
