MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexico on Tuesday announced a huge commitment to Chinese vaccines, without releasing any information about their effectiveness.
Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said the Mexican government has signed agreements for 12 million doses of the unapproved Sinopharm vaccine and has increased its contracts for the dose to a total of 20 million doses. of Coronavac made by the Chinese Sinovac.
Sinovac deliveries have already begun, with 20 million full doses scheduled for July. Sinopharm vaccines will be delivered between March and June.
The total of 32 million doses, plus at least 4 million doses of the CanSino vaccine, would nullify the estimated 5 million doses of vaccine that Mexico has so far acquired from other sources.
However, Ebrard’s office has repeatedly refused to answer questions about the effectiveness of Chinese firing.
Sinopharm has claimed that its vaccine was 79% effective based on provisional clinical trial data, but, like other Chinese companies, has not publicly released its final-stage clinical trial data.
Hong Kong experts have estimated the effectiveness of the Sinovac vaccine at around 51%. This feature has already been approved for use in Mexico.
The CanSino vaccine has been approved in Mexico and appears to have an efficacy rate of around 65.7%.
A total of six vaccines have been approved for use in Mexico, which has received relatively small amounts. Mexico has administered only about 4.7 million doses of all vaccines, a small amount given the country’s population of 126 million.
Government policy sets out the rare situation in which some Mexicans, mostly in urban areas, will receive the Pfizer vaccine, which is about 95% effective, while most will get one of the Chinese vaccines with much lower effectiveness. Mexico has contracts for a total of about 34 million doses of Pfizer’s shot, but deliveries have been slow, with less than a tenth of that amount so far.
Amid a lack of public data on vaccines in China, hesitations about their effectiveness and safety are still widespread in countries that depend on them.
Inoculations with Chinese vaccines have already begun in more than 25 countries. None of China’s three vaccine candidates used globally have publicly released their final-stage clinical trial data.
Mexico has suffered nearly 190,100 confirmed deaths. However, Mexico makes so little evidence that government figures on excess deaths suggest the actual toll was well over 220,000 in early January, when the government stopped publishing that data. The cases confirmed by the test add up to more than 2.1 million.