MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexico approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine for emergency use on Monday, hoping to stimulate a vaccination effort that has given only 44,000 vaccines since the third week of December, about 82% of the doses that the country received.
The Pfizer vaccine was the only one approved for use in Mexico, until Mexican regulators approved the AstraZeneca vaccine on Monday.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard wrote on his Twitter account on Monday that “the emergency approval of the AstraZeneca vaccine is very good news … with that, production will start soon in Mexico!”
A Mexican firm provided part of the finishing and packaging for the vaccine.
The undersecretary of health, Hugo López-Gatell, said that he wrongly reported the approval of the Chinese vaccine manufacturer CanSino, noting that he had not yet presented full study results for safety and effectiveness.
Mexico has pinned many of its hopes on the cheap, single-dose CanSino vaccine. “It will make things a lot easier for us,” said López-Gatell.
The Mexican Social Security Institute also released more information about a doctor in northern Mexico who had such a severe allergic reaction to the Pfizer vaccine last week that she was hospitalized in the ICU.
The doctor had difficulty breathing, inflammation of the brain and seizures half an hour after receiving the injection. Experts are conducting tests to determine if she has suffered a rare inflammation of the spinal cord called transverse myelitis. She is supposed to be recovering.
López-Gatell, who leads the efforts to deal with the pandemic, had to explain why he was seen on a beach on the Pacific coast, apparently sitting in a seaside restaurant without a face mask.
López-Gatell repeatedly advised Mexicans to stay home. He also cast doubt on how masks protect people from the coronavirus virus.
López-Gatell said he saw nothing wrong with going to the state of Oaxaca, on the Pacific coast, to see friends and relatives, noting that the level of alertness of the virus was lower there.
Over the weekend, local media posted photos of López-Gatell sitting at an open-air restaurant, reportedly at the laid-back beach resort of Zipolite in southern Oaxaca, which has mandatory rules about face masks.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called López-Gatell “a good public servant”. Mexico has almost 1.45 million cases of coronavirus and 127,757 deaths.
“It is good that there is this scrutiny, but a civil servant also has rights,” said López Obrador.