Mexico’s health regulator has granted emergency use authorization to Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ.N) COVID-19 vaccine, Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said on Thursday.
Even so, Lopez-Gatell said there was no immediate plan to acquire the vaccine for Mexico.
“We have a decent supply with the other five vaccines,” he said during his regular evening news conference.
Lopez-Gatell estimated that as many as 2 million Mexicans might travel to the United States to get inoculated but stressed that there were no formal assessments.
The regulator, COFEPRIS, said in a separate statement that the authorization for emergency use certifies that the vaccine meets the quality, safety and efficacy requirements necessary to be applied.
The Ministry of Health (SSa) reported that until the last cut of this Thursday, May 27, there were 222,657 deaths caused by the coronavirus disease in Mexico. This means that in the last 24 hours, 425 new deaths were added to the national statistics.
This was announced by José Luis Alomía, director of Epidemiology, who also detailed that from week 18 to 19 of 2021 a decrease of 5% was reported in estimated cases (sum of confirmed and suspected infections) at the national level, accounting for 2,592,017 to the last cut. Likewise, 1,921,510 people recovered from the disease were reported.
