AstraZeneca Vaccine Shipment Arrives in Mexico

Today, AstraZeneca’s 30th shipment containing 1.98 million COVID-19 vaccines arrived at Mexico’s City International Airport (AICM). Staff of the Ministry of Health and the Mexican Army (SADENA) were in charge of securing the vaccines. To date, Mexico has received a total of 163.52 million vaccine doses from different pharmaceuticals and has bottled many millions more.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 179.27 million vaccine doses have been administered to the Mexican population. To date, 61.08 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.

There are 5.54 million positive COVID-19 cases throughout Mexico. In the last seven days, 32,715 new cases were reported. Mexico City, State of Mexico, Nuevo Leon, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Tabasco, San Luis Potosi, Veracruz, Puebla and Sonora are the entities with higher number of cases. Women represent 51.95 percent of positive cases and men the remaining 48.05 percent. From the total infected, only 12.05 percent have been hospitalized. The main comorbidities present among those affected are hypertension and obesity. 

Mexico is going through the fourth wave of SARS-CoV-2. This one with the most contagious variant to date: Omicron. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Omicron has been the one to propagate faster, with a multiplication time of two days. Among other consequences, the Omicron variant came to put 9 percent of Mexico’s workforce on sick leave as reported by MBN. Evidence has shown that a previous infection could provide less protection against Omicron in comparison with other variants such as Delta.

Minister of Health Hugo López-Gatell assured that Mexico is going on the right path and has indicated that prevention measures might be eased soon in some states. “We are in a very sustained reduction of the pandemic. We want to reach the minimum point, minimum epidemic intensity, but we still want to observe for a few more weeks that this reduction remains stable. If this were the situation, we could begin to recommend reducing the intensity of some measures,” said López-Gatell.

Nuevo Leon’s authorities have even considered ending the mask mandate. However, “as long as there is no scientific evidence that masks are not necessary to reduce virus circulation, we will continue to evaluate expert’s recommendations,” said Alma Marroquín, Nuevo Leon’s Health Minister.