MEXICO (AP) – Mexico Tuesday announced a major bet on Chinese vaccines, without disclosing any information about their effectiveness.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said the Mexican government had signed agreements for 12 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine not yet approved and increased its contracts for the Coronavac dose made by Sinovac of China to a total of 20 million doses.
Sinovac’s deliveries have already started, with the 20 million full doses expected by July. Sinopharm vaccines are expected to be delivered between March and June.
The total of 32 million doses, plus at least 4 million doses of the CanSino injection, would exceed the estimated 5 million doses of vaccine that Mexico has acquired so far from other sources.
However, Ebrard’s office has repeatedly refused to answer questions about the effectiveness of Chinese injections.
Sinopharm said its vaccine was 79% effective based on provisional clinical trial data, but, like other Chinese companies, did not publicly disclose its final-stage clinical trial data.
Hong Kong experts estimated the effectiveness of the Sinovac vaccine at about 51%. This shot has already been approved for use in Mexico.
The CanSino vaccine was approved in Mexico and reportedly has an efficacy rate of around 65.7%,
A total of six vaccines have been approved for use in Mexico, which has received relatively small amounts of each. Mexico administered only about 4.7 million doses of all vaccines, a minuscule amount given the country’s 126 million population.
The government’s policy sets up the strange situation in which some Mexicans, especially in urban areas, will receive the Pfizer vaccine, which is about 95% effective, while the majority will receive one of the Chinese vaccines with much less effectiveness. Mexico has contracts for a total of about 34 million doses of the Pfizer injection, but deliveries have been slow, with less than a tenth of that amount delivered so far.
Amid the scarcity of public data on China’s vaccines, doubts about its effectiveness and safety are still common in countries that depend on them.
Inoculations with Chinese vaccines have started in more than 25 countries. None of the three vaccine candidates from China used globally has publicly released their final-stage clinical trial data.
Mexico suffered almost 190,100 confirmed deaths. However, Mexico does so few tests that the government’s excess death toll suggests that the actual death toll was well over 220,000 in early January, when the government stopped releasing this data. Test-confirmed cases total more than 2.1 million.