The Covid-19 vaccination program will be extended to all 32 states of Mexico on Tuesday, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Monday as the country recorded more than 7,000 new cases and almost 700 deaths.
“In the vaccination plan, we’re moving from the calibration phase to the expansion phase. We’re going to have vaccination units operating in Covid hospitals in the 32 federal entities,” the coronavirus point man told reporters at the Health Ministry’s nightly press briefing.
The deputy minister said the establishment of more vaccination points would “radically change” the pace of the vaccine rollout.
Mexico started immunizing healthcare workers on December 24 using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine but the vaccination program has been limited to Mexico City and Coahuila. So far only 87,060 people have received a first dose of the vaccine, which is administered in two shots three weeks apart.
But López-Gatell highlighted that almost 440,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine were scheduled to arrive Tuesday, adding that they would be distributed by the military. It is expected that all health workers in Mexico will be vaccinated against Covid-19 by the end of January, he said.
The focus will subsequently shift to seniors aged 80 and over followed by those in the 70-79 and 60-69 age brackets.
President López Obrador said Tuesday that it’s expected that 15 million seniors will be vaccinated against Covid-19 between January and April. People aged under 60 with chronic diseases that make them more vulnerable to a serious Covid-19 illness will be next in line.
The president said last week that the aim was to inoculate 12.45 million seniors by the end of March, explaining that 10,000 vaccination brigades would fan out across the country to complete the task.
Presenting a five-stage national vaccination plan in December, López-Gatell said that the intention is to administer Covid-19 vaccines to about 75% of the population aged 16 and over by the end of 2021.
To reach that ambitious target, Mexico intends to use a range of Covid-19 vaccines.
The Pfizer vaccine is the only one currently being used in Mexico but the health regulator Cofepris last week approved the AstraZeneca/Oxford University shot. That vaccine – for which the government has an agreement to buy 77.4 million doses – will be used in Mexico starting in March, López-Gatell said Tuesday.
The deputy minister said Monday that the federal government has held initial discussions with Russia to purchase 24 million doses of its Sputnik V vaccine. López-Gatell said he met with Russian officials during a trip to Argentina last week and that the Mexican government reached “preliminary agreements” to purchase that number of doses – enough to inoculate 12 million people.
Speaking at López Obrador’s press conference on Tuesday, the deputy minister said the Sputnik vaccine has a “capacity and efficiency similar to the other vaccines that have been authorized.”
(Russia said in December that the vaccine had an efficacy of 91.4%.)
López-Gatell said that Cofepris began the vaccine review process on the weekend and that a decision with respect to emergency use approval will be taken soon.
Mexico also has an agreement to purchase 35 million doses of China’s CanSino Biologics single-dose vaccine. Immunization could begin in February if it is approved by Cofepris, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said last week.
The government has pledged to make vaccines available free of charge to the entire population of Mexico. López Obrador has said that he is not opposed to the private sector purchasing and administering vaccines but suggested it wouldn’t be easy due to limited global supply.
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