Mexico announces first batch of AstraZeneca vaccines for Argentina this weekend

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Mexico will send Argentina the first batch of 800,000 AstraZeneca vaccines packaged in the country next weekend, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard announced Tuesday.

“On the weekend Mexico will receive 800,000 and Argentina the other 800,000, half and half, because it was agreed in August 2020,” he said at a press conference at the National Palace before the Argentine Minister of Health, Carla Vizzotti, and Cecilia Nicolini, advisor to the Presidency of Argentina.

Mexico and Argentina had announced last August an agreement with the support of the Carlos Slim Foundation to produce in Argentina and package in Mexico, 250 million doses of the AstraZeneca drug for distribution in Latin America. Still, the process had stalled at the Mexican plant.

Therefore, Minister Vizzotti traveled this Sunday to Mexico to “closely follow the release process” of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccines that the countries are jointly producing.

Ebrard explained that this first batch is part of the agreement. With the approval of the Comisión Federal de Protección Contra Riesgos Sanitarios (Cofepris) AstraZeneca, the vaccine will be supplied not only to Argentina but also to “many Latin American countries”.

The President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, informed at the press conference that he would be speaking virtually with his “friend” Alberto Fernández, the President of Argentina.

“We also have the commitment, and commitments are fulfilled, to support countries that do not have enough vaccines, that is why today’s event is significant, the fact that representatives of Argentina’s health sector accompany us,” he said.

Currently, Argentina faces the worst moment of the pandemic with a second wave that has left records in the last week of almost 40,000 daily infections, on Wednesday, and 745 deaths, on Tuesday.

The South American country has accumulated almost 3.5 million positives and is approaching 75,000 deaths.

Meanwhile, Mexico is living a more relaxed moment after reporting on Monday its lowest number of daily deaths of the whole year, with 48, after consolidating its position as the country with the fourth-most deaths, with more than 221,000 deaths and almost 2.4 million contagions.

“Argentina has helped us, and we have to reciprocate in the same way, this agreement to produce the AstraZeneca vaccine jointly is already beginning to bear fruit,” commented López Obrador.

The President reiterated that the production of the anticovid drug in the national plant “will allow Mexico to have vaccines, have enough vaccines in Argentina and other Latin American and Caribbean countries; therefore, it is a good day.”