Mexico will receive 250,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine sometime before the end of the month, José Luis Alomía Zegarra, director of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Health, announced on December 2.
Before it can be applied, the vaccine will first require approval from Mexico’s health regulator, Cofepris, a process that is not expected to take long. The United Kingdom this week became the first nation to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for widespread use; other countries are expected to follow suit quickly.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday that the Mexican Army will be responsible for the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines throughout Mexico. The Pfizer vaccine, which offers 94.5 percent protection against the virus, requires storage at very low temperatures – around -70 degrees Celsius – and once transferred to a refrigerator, must be administered within five days. Meticulous planning in how the vaccine will be administered will be required since many Mexican states do not have the ultra-cold freezers required to store the vaccine. Pfizer has said it will use temperature-controlled thermal shippers, which use dry ice, to export the vaccine outside of the United States.
Eventually, Mexico expects to receive 35 million doses of the Pfizer-Biotech vaccine, and has also secured vaccines from two other companies: AstraZeneca and Cansino Biologics Inc. However, one issue that may delay the start of mass inoculations is the uncertainty surrounding the AstraZeneca and Oxford University vaccine, which has come under scrutiny in both the United Kingdom and United States regarding the data from its clinical trials.