2022 Health Budget Ready, Will Face COVID-19: Ministry of Finance

Mexico’s healthcare system will have a MX$800 billion (US$40 billion) guaranteed budget in 2022 to face the COVID-19 pandemic, said Rogelio Ramírez de la O, Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP).

“The resources to continue to face the pandemic are fully guaranteed in this budget. The health sector continues to face the sanitary contingency and the National Vaccination Program has proven to be effective in reducing deaths and mitigating the health consequences of the population,” said Ramírez de la O.

The Ministry of Health's budget will increase by 27.6 percent compared to 2021, according to Ramírez de la O, who delivered the 2022 Federal Expenses Budget to the Chamber of Deputies earlier this week. These resources will be used to keep buying vaccines and address the medicine shortages.

The vaccination campaign will end in 1Q22, according to the Ministry of Finance, and will continue stimulating the economic recovery in Mexican’s industries. “The full implementation of the vaccination program will allow the reopening of those sectors characterized by high social proximity or that are carried out in closed spaces, as well as other sectors linked to the previous ones,” says the document delivered to the lower house.

Taking the entire Expenses Budget into account, the health sector is one of the four units that will have a budget increase in 2022. The Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Wellbeing and the Ministry of Security are the other three organizations with a budget increase, compared with 2021. Tourism’s budget will be MX$65.7 billion (US$3.3 billion), a considerable 70 percent increase compared to last year’s budget. On the other hand, the Ministry of Economy, SEDATU, CONACYT and SEDENA will be the ones that suffer budget cuts, with a 45 percent, 22.5 percent, 11.26 percent and 7.5 percent decrease, respectively, compared to 2021’s budget.

Vaccination Rate Lowered

The National Vaccination Campaign continues across the country but at a slower pace these past two weeks. In total, over 59 million Mexicans have received at least one jab of the COVID-19 vaccine, with over 37 million being already fully-vaccinated, which represents the 28.9 percent of the total population.

Despite the success of the campaign in over-18-year-olds in most boroughs of Mexico City, there are still four that have not begun vaccinating. However, Cuajimalpa will begin vaccinating 18-to-29-year-olds next week, according to Eduardo Clark García Dobarganes, Director General of the Digital Agency of Public Innovation. He also said that the emergency situation in Mexico City improved last week.

“It was a week of considerable improvement here in Mexico City. We are below the plateau that we reached throughout 2020. In other words, we crossed those levels of las year and now fortunately we are following a clear downward trajectory,” said Clark.