CAMPECHE, Mexico – In recent weeks, thousands of public school teachers lined up outside schools and hospitals in this southern state as naval helicopters buzzed overhead carrying a beautiful shipment sent exclusively for them. by the Mexican president: the Covid-19 vaccines.
The government’s own guidelines call for hospital workers and front-line seniors in Mexico’s hardest-hit cities to be beaten first. But rural Mexico teachers are a key voting bloc.
Critics of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador say that vaccinating teachers in front of all doctors is the latest evidence of how the left-wing president is playing politics with vaccinations in a country with the third highest number of official deaths. Covid-19 in the world, about 180,000. And instead of having state health workers, according to the usual protocol, the administration of Mr. López Obrador uses officials from his care arm, “Servants of the Nation”, recognizable by the vests they wear with the national emblem of Mexico.
Campeche is one of the key states holding midterm elections in June. Polls show that Mr. López Obrador’s Morena party has a chance to oust the former PRI ruler, who ruled Campeche since the late 1920s. Although many countries have made teachers a priority in vaccination programs during the coronavirus pandemic, they are not usually ahead of health care workers.
Inside hospitals, health workers have been furious that the government inoculated teachers while nearly half of the state’s doctors and nurses were still waiting.