•RESHUFFLE: Mexico is in a rush to restructure its coronavirus vaccination effort after the temporary closure of the main Pfizer plant in Belgium that will delay and reduce the number of doses arriving in the country. Currently, Pfizer’s is the only coronavirus vaccine available in Mexico.
•VACCINES: A batch of 219,000 Pfizer vaccine arrived Tuesday in Mexico which is just around half of the 435,000 originally planned. The next shipment will not arrive until February 15, a fact that has forced officials to consider delaying the application of the Pfizer’s vaccine second dose.
•DELAY: “(The advisory group of the World Health Organization) meets every Tuesday and among the different issues to discuss is whether or not the delaying (the second dose from 28) up to 42 days can be supported in scientific evidence”, said Hugo López-Gatell, Mexico’s undersecretary of health.
•NUMBERS: More than 429,000 Mexican health workers have received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine but only 6,500 have received the required second dose. Mexico has already approved Great Britain’s AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine but will not receive the first batches until March.