Mexico ships 400,000 AstraZeneca vaccines to Latin America and the Caribbean

The Mexican government has started shipping more than 400,000 AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccines to Latin America and the Caribbean. Belize, Bolivia and Paraguay will be the first countries to receive these doses packaged in Mexican laboratories. “It begins today, with the support of the Mexican Air Force, the shipment of AstraZeneca vaccines provided by Mexico, as president of CELAC, to the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean” , announced the Minister of Foreign Affairs Marcelo Ebrard via his Twitter account. Thousands of doses will also be sent to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in the coming days.

Martha Delgado, Undersecretary for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights in Foreign Relations, said Bolivia and Paraguay will each receive 150,000 vaccines and Belize will receive 100,000 doses. “We are convinced that intra-regional solidarity must prevail in times of great crisis. After conducting a comprehensive consultation with countries in the region to identify their immediate needs, we hope to be able to prepare more shipments for other countries in the near future, ”the official said.

The Ministry of Foreign Relations has indicated in writing that the doses have been packaged at temperatures between 2 and 8 degrees and will be transported in Mexican Air Force planes to Belize, where they will be delivered by the sub- Secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean, Maximiliano Reyes, together with the Director General for Latin America and the Caribbean, Martín Borrego.

Another flight will take off to La Paz, Bolivia, where Under Secretary Martha Delgado will make the corresponding delivery to the Bolivian authorities on Sunday afternoon and, finally, Efraín Guadarrama, CELAC coordinator, will deliver the doses to Asunción, Paraguay. , the night of Sunday 14th, this with the Birmex staff. Through his Twitter account, the President of Paraguay, Mario Abdo, thanked the Mexican government for its cooperation.

As part of the collaborative project between Mexico and Argentina for the distribution of vaccines this Saturday, 800,000 doses of AstraZeneca will also be sent to the city of Buenos Aires. Last May and with a delay of three months, the shipment of AstraZeneca vaccines began between Mexico and Argentina. The start of the binational plan began with the distribution of 1.6 million doses produced in the South American country and packaged in Mexico. The initiative began to take shape in August 2020 thanks to an agreement, supported by the Carlos Slim Foundation, for the distribution of the remedy Oxford-AstraZeneca in Latin America. The goal is to reach 250 million doses, the active ingredient of which is manufactured in Argentina by the biotechnology company mAbxience, owned by businessman Hugo Sigman, and is packaged in a factory at Liomont laboratories in Mexico. .

The two countries had planned that these vaccines would begin to be distributed in the region last March, although ultimately, like vaccination campaigns throughout the region, the plan was delayed. López Obrador’s executive, with a provisional seat on the United Nations Security Council, led a protest at the UN earlier this year against drug seizures by more developed countries.

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