Rodolfo spent hour after hour aggravating trying to register his elderly mother for a vaccination against Covid-19 through a Mexican government website, only for the system to crash repeatedly.
“I spent three days struggling with the site,” he said. “My mom wouldn’t have been able to do that without me.”
After the site was launched on Tuesday, millions of Mexicans over the age of 60 who tried to register were greeted by an error message for days on end. And even when the page loaded, other users reported further delays while a separate government agency checks official identification numbers, only to deliver the message “No response”.
Many countries, including Canada and EU member states, have struggled to launch their vaccine programs, but Mexico’s disastrous launch came at a particularly bad time.
The number of daily Covid-19 deaths in the country averaged more than 1,000 during January, while hospital beds, oxygen tanks and intubation drugs were in short supply. The official death toll is now over 163,000 – the third highest in the world.
The collapse of the health department’s website only fueled the feeling that the government’s response was wrong.
“It looks like a placebo,” said Bárbara González, a political analyst, after registering her parents for vaccination. “It is hard to believe that things will start to improve after they have done such a bad job so far.”
Human rights groups have also raised concerns that many people, including migrants from other countries and internal migrants, do not have an official identification number. “Health is a human right that cannot be denied to anyone for any reason, including their nationality or immigration status,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, director of Amnesty International for the Americas.
Mexico was the first country in Latin America to receive Covid-19 vaccines and started vaccinating health professionals on December 22. But the pace has slowed to just 4,365 doses a day, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker, and at the current rate, it would take a decade to vaccinate all Mexicans.
Mexican health officials expect more doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 400,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine to begin arriving later this month – insufficient quantities for the country’s 750,000 frontline health professionals, according to the Associated Press.
Health professionals complained that administrators were vaccinated first. Questions were also raised about vaccinating teachers in the southern state of Campeche – where infections are low – so that classes can resume.
Thousands of employees promoting government social programs known as “servants of the nation” are also being vaccinated prior to their participation in vaccination campaigns, causing suspicions that vaccination would be used as a support in campaigns for midterm elections. June.
“There is no strategy,” said Xavier Tello, a health analyst. “It was just a series of random plans.”
The site’s failure coincided with an optimistic video by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly called “Amlo”), in which he said he had tested negative for coronavirus 12 days after contracting the disease.
He expressed his optimistic message of hope and faith, along with promises to overcome the worst of the pandemic.
“We will continue to take care of ourselves and have faith that we will not be sick anymore. And, most importantly, we are going to save lives, ”said the president.
“This month, we are going to mass vaccinate people, this February. The same in March and April ”, he added.
López Obrador is expected to return to work on Monday. His Thursday message spoke of solidarity – “Tragedy is making us more fraternal, more generous, more loving,” he said – although he maintained his policies of severe austerity throughout the pandemic.
In his message, López Obrador said: “We don’t have a consumer crisis”, but restaurant owners and employees disagree. They knocked pots and pans outside their establishments on Thursday to demand a more robust response from the government and a lifting of restrictions on indoor dining.
“This is hard to sustain,” said Abel Hernández, chef and owner of two restaurants in Mexico City, Eloise and Lorreta. “It’s been 11 months and we haven’t had any support from the government.”