Although only just started, Mexico’s Covid-19 vaccination program looks set to take a three-week recess after Pfizer announced the suspension of its next three shipments here.
The reason, according to Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell, is that Pfizer is undertaking “technical adjustments” to its plant in Belgium, in order to crank up its vaccine production rate four-fold. (Mexico is not the only country affected by the suspensions.)
The shipment of 440,000 Pfizer doses that arrived in Mexico on Tuesday, January 19, was cut in half to 220,000. Jalisco’s allocation from this amount shrank from 26,325 to 9,750.
Pfizer’s Mexico shipments planned for the following three Tuesdays – of roughly the same quantity – have been cancelled, and will restart on February 15, Lopez-Gatell explained on Monday.
Mexico has signed an agreement with Pfizer for 34.4 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine, five million of which the U.S. pharmaceutical giant has promised to deliver by the end of March, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard confirmed the following day.
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