• CHINA: Mexico announced Tuesday that it had secured 22 million new doses of Chinese-made coronavirus vaccines that would reportedly be available by mid-summer in what is a redoubled bet on their efficacy amid an urgency to accelerate vaccination.
• CORONAVAC: In February, Mexico disclosed a deal to buy 10 million doses of China’s Coronavac vaccine -made by state-owned Sinovac- of which 1 million have arrived. The new purchase includes 10 million of Coronavac vaccines which Mexico has already approved for emergency use.
• SINOPHARM: Also included in the new purchase are 12 million doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine which has yet to be approved by Mexico but already in use in more than a dozen countries. A third Chinese vaccine, CanSino, is being bottled in a laboratory in Mexico but has yet to roll out.
• NUMBERS: As of early Tuesday, Mexican officials said that the total of vaccine doses administered in Mexico was 2 million 849,630. The country has received a total of 4 million 691,755 doses of four different vaccines: Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Coronavac and Sputnik V.
