AstraZeneca doses in Mexico have been delayed and now packaged in the United States to comply with Argentina

The AstraZeneca laboratory, from which Argentina bought 22.4 million vaccines against the coronavirus, juggles to try to respect the promised deadlines in the delivery of the doses. Production and administration issues in Mexico, where the Liomont plant packages the active ingredient, have caused delays and half of the production has already been diverted to the United States.

The Oxford vaccine for Latin America (except Brazil) is manufactured in Argentina, in the MabXience laboratory of the Insud group. As he could know Bugle, the production rate at this Garín plant is in line with planned plans. They were already shipped 24 million vaccines. The first half went to Mexico. The second half, in the United States.

The American factory was in principle the solution found by AstraZeneca to be able to surf production problems in Mexico. At first there was a lack of Provisions for the packaging, from which Liomont suffered. At a time, administrative problems it slowed down the process.

According to Reuters, Under Secretary for Multilateral Affairs Martha Delgado said that “the Mexican regulatory process delayed the start-up of the Liomont plant this will bottle the vaccine and now the first doses will not be ready until the first week of May ”.

In Argentina, an average of 6 million doses per week and these were sent directly to the United States, taking into account the obstacle that AstraZeneca encountered to complete its production there, as planned from the outset with the Slim Foundation.

Pharmaceutical industry sources confirmed at Bugle that the doses packaged in the United States would be ready for distribution in Latin America by the second week of April. What is not clear is still what amount of this total will correspond to Argentina.

According to the contract the country signed with AstraZeneca, the first batch was expected in March, although later it was postponed to April. The first shipment had been set at 1,191,000 doses; the second, a month later, at 4,635,500; the third, 3,451,000; and the last, 8,518,000.

This is not the first setback Argentina has suffered with its vaccine suppliers. With Sputnik V, they were already in evidence, since of the 20 million doses that are expected to arrive between January and February, so far it has arrived just over 10 percent.

The government has not yet been able to confirm when the 3 million Chinese Sinopharm vaccines, despite the fact that at first he had let it be known that it would happen this week. These vaccines, on the other hand, are only allowed for people under the age of 60.

AstraZeneca, for its part, has faced not only production problems in Mexico, but also globally with disruptions in the supply of its vaccines. some European countries for suspected side effects detected.

Argentina was the second country in the world to approve the Oxford vaccine (after the UK), which the lab says gave our country the chance to receive two additional lots of the same vaccine produced in India, whose trade name is Covishield.

This came after learning that the first batch of vaccine produced in Argentina would not arrive until April, instead of March. From Covishield, a first batch of 580 thousand vaccinations in February and the second of the same volume was announced before the end of the month.

PS