Mexico Signs Agreements to Buy Potential Covid-19 Vaccines
13 Oktober 2020 - 7:15PM
Dow Jones News
By Anthony Harrup
MEXICO CITY -- Mexico signed agreements with three companies on
Tuesday that are developing vaccines against Covid-19, and it
expects to secure doses for more than 100 million people through
2021.
Mexico will buy eventual vaccines for 39 million people from
AstraZeneca PLC of the U.K., as many as 17 million from Pfizer Inc.
and 35 million from China's CanSino Biologics Inc.
It's also participating in the international vaccine alliance
Covax, through which it expects to obtain doses for about 26
million people.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he hopes Mexico can
start innoculating people in December "or in the first quarter of
next year at the latest."
Mexico will participate within days in the phase 3 clinical
trials being carried out by CanSino, and is in talks to take part
in trials with companies from the U.S., Germany, Russia, France and
Italy, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said.
The cost of the eventual vaccines is estimated around $1.7
billion. Finance Minister Arturo Herrera said Mexico has paid $159
million up front, and will increase those prepayments to $321
million by the end of this year.
With a population of 126 million, Mexico is among the countries
with the most deaths of people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus
with close to 84,000 as of Monday, according to health
officials.
In a survey of 1,000 Mexicans by polling firm Consulta Mitovsky,
conducted by mobile phone Oct. 9-11, 34% said they would seek to be
among the first people to take a vaccine if it was free of charge
or inexpensive. Around half said they would prefer others to be the
first, and 12% said they wouldn't take the vaccine.
"Even though Mexico has one of the best track records when it
comes to launching universal vaccination campaigns, there are
certainly challenges that the government will face in getting the
public to accept new vaccines that do not have a long track record
of use in humans," political risk consulting firm Empra said in a
recent report.
Empra noted Mexico's efforts to pursue a range of potential
vaccines, "not only to diversify risk from investing solely in one
vaccine candidate that may not prove successful, but also because
different vaccines have different levels of effectiveness in
particular demographic groups."
Write to Anthony Harrup at anthony.harrup@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 13, 2020 13:00 ET (17:00 GMT)
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