Mexico has concluded its vaccination plan against the coronavirus after having managed to inoculate 83% of its population of legal age with at least one dose of the drug, as announced this Friday by the Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López-Gatell.
“We are pleased to report the conclusion of this important stage and the fulfillment of the goal to which we committed ourselves, having made the entire adult population of Mexico available and sought to be vaccinated,” said the epidemiologist during the daily morning conference. However, the objective set was to vaccinate 100% of the population over 18 years of age before the end of October, so at the end of the plan, there are still 17% of Mexican adults who have not received the antidote.
The vaccination plan was accelerated thanks to Operation Roadrunner, which deployed 304,805 brigades in 14,190 vaccination centers throughout the country. More than half a million daily doses have been injected, in some cases more than a million, according to the statements of the Undersecretary of Health. In total, the Government has distributed 125,739,964 injections, a sufficient quantity to inoculate 74 million people, according to the Ministry of Health. Of the people who have received the drug, 81% have the complete regimen (60,130,077 people).
López Obrador also joined the celebration, who despite this deficit of 17% of adults without inoculation, claimed to have applied at least one dose “to all Mexicans, women, and men, over 18 years of age.” Shortly after, he introduced the nuance that broke the emphatics of his previous statements:
“Of course, there are those who have not agreed to be vaccinated, but they are changing their minds, and we are going to continue with second doses, we are going to continue convincing those who have not been vaccinated. The best argument [to convince] is that the majority of those hospitalized due to contagion and those who unfortunately die, are not vaccinated. The vaccine helps, the vaccine protects”, said the president.
“The greatest health crisis that the world has faced in the last century required the largest public health operation. The vaccine has literally reached every corner of the country. We can report mission success,” López-Gatell continued. “We have enough vaccines, we contracted almost 250 million doses [248,955,240], including almost 10 million that were donated. This is enough to vaccinate 132 million people, in a country with 126 million inhabitants”, he explained.
To put the figures in context, López-Gatell mentioned how in the 2020 National Health and Nutrition Survey, 62% of those consulted assured that they would get the vaccine, 10% doubted and 28% rejected the drug. “We have already reached 83% and we continue to persuade people. In that sense there is a complete success”, he expressed.
López Obrador also announced the start of the vaccination plan for girls and boys, with priority in the first place for chronically ill or minors with disabilities, thus complying with the order of a judge who set a period of five days to start the inoculation against covid -19 for the age group between 12 and 17 years old. However, the head of the Ministry of the Interior, Adán Augusto López, confessed that the federal government has not been notified of this resolution.
The closure of the Vaccination Plan for those over 18 comes a day after Mexico City also concluded the vaccination of those over 18 years of age. Since the beginning of the pandemic, throughout Mexico, there have been 3,798,286 infections and 287,631 deaths from coronavirus -according to data from John Hopkins University-, making it the fourth country in the world with the most deaths from covid-19 in the world, only behind India, Brazil and the United States, and the sixteenth country in the number of infections, according to the figures of Statista.
Mexico has concluded its vaccination plan against the coronavirus after having managed to inoculate 83% of its population of legal age with at least . . .
