Covid-19: Mexico’s President criticizes pharmaceutical companies for promoting vaccine booster doses

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, warned this Tuesday (17) that pharmaceutical companies are now seeking to sell booster doses of Covid vaccines without necessarily having scientific evidence on the matter.

At the press conference from the National Palace, a journalist asked him about the recent recommendation of the Chinese pharmaceutical company CanSino to apply a second dose of its product, which was applied mainly to teachers in Mexico.

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“As is natural, the pharmaceutical companies want more vaccines to be consumed, and we have to acquire the vaccines that are necessary and define a policy to protect the people, and not a mercantile or commercial policy,” said the President.

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He indicated that “everyone” has their “role” and the pharmaceutical companies are in “their role”, but the Government has to “take care of the budget” and act “based on scientific grounds and not on statements or bulletins”.

On August 8, in a press release, CanSino Biologics reported that it had obtained results indicating that a second dose applied six months after the first one “achieves an eight-fold increase in the levels of neutralizing antibodies,” providing greater protection.

In his turn to speak, the strategist against the pandemic in Mexico, Hugo Lopez-Gatell, indicated that “scientific evidence” that is “solid and consistent” is sought before making a decision.

And regarding booster doses, he said that for the moment, “there is no published, robust, consistent scientific evidence” that demonstrates that vaccines lose over time “their protective capacity” against the “outcomes that we are interested in avoiding” such as death or serious illness.

“As of today, August 17, 2021, we continue to monitor and will continue to monitor. If clear, robust, consistent scientific evidence were to appear to show that the protective potency of vaccines was reduced, this could lead to another decision, but to date, this has not happened,” he said.

“Up to this moment, there is no evidence” on these booster doses, he remarked. Still, there is a “large amount of information coming from the marketing sections of the pharmaceutical companies” or their own managers that “suggest” that this is needed without it necessarily being “scientifically proven”.

In addition, he said that CanSino indicated that it would present in Mexico a “technical dossier” to achieve a change in the sanitary registry and request a second dose. Still, so far, it has not done so.

Mexico currently has more than 3.1 million infections and 248,652 deaths, making it the country with the fourth highest number of Covid-19 deaths in absolute numbers.

The Mexican government’s position contrasts with that of Chile, the United States, and Israel, which have already endorsed a third booster dose for at-risk populations.