Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that a deal with Swedish-British pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca guarantees that all Mexicans will have “free and universal” access to the coronavirus vaccine.
AMLO said the Mexican Constitution states that healthcare is a universal basic right, and promised to not leave the country’s poor at the end of the queue. “Other countries may decide to charge for the vaccine or to select who gets vaccinated and who doesn’t. We guarantee the vaccine to all Mexicans,” he said, in a press conference.
It is important to stress, however, that the efficacy of AstraZeneca’s potential vaccine is far from a certainty. The company is running human trials in Brazil — but the results will take months, at the earliest.
Mexico currently has the third-highest coronavirus tallies in the world, behind only Brazil and the U.S., with almost 500,000 confirmed cases and 54,000 deaths.
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