• OPERATION: A Honduras-based textile entrepreneur organized a secret health drive in the Mexican southern state of Campeche that ended up injecting more than 1,000 people with an unknown substance supposed to be Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, REFORMA newspaper revealed.
• SEIZURE: According to people interviewed by the newspaper, Pakistani-born businessman Mohamad Yusuf Amdani Bai orchestrated the drive among employees and friends of one of his textile plants in Campeche. A batch of 5,755 doses of the alleged vaccines was seized by Mexico last week.
• FEAR: “They told us not to reveal anything. But when we learned of the seizure and that the (Sputnik V vaccines) were false, we were overcome with fear. So what did they apply to us?”, a Campeche man who received the alleged vaccine told REFORMA and who asked not to be named.
• SUBSTANCE: Immediately after being confiscated at the Campeche airport, the Russian Direct Investment Fund said that the vaccines were not authentic. Mexico’s sanitary risks body (COFEPRIS) has yet to provide prosecutors with an expert opinion of what exactly the seized substance is. No arrests have been made.
