Mexico Runs Out Dry On Vaccine Supply

Countries like Mexico needs a unique vaccination strategy......

As the world is able to pick and choose more than one Covid-19 vaccine, some nations don’t even have one. In fact, there are not spoilt for choices- they have none.

These include the poorer ones like Mexico and many countries in the continent of South Africa. Mexico had to deal with crashing down of their online system of registration for vaccines. They are already short of the numbers to cover the whole population. The restaurant owners are crying out loud over the loss of business due to corona virus extended restrictions. So, vaccination is of paramount importance.

South Africa is receiving its lot under the Covax scheme. However, that is not going to be immediately, while the continent is reeling under spread of the variants too. India, meanwhile has helped with over two million vaccine doses.

The situation in Mexico is bad. The medical system is breaking down.  Record number of cases have crossed 1000 per day. Business is suffering, forcing people to run to the borders looking for alternate route of survival. The neighbouring cities are already swelling at the rims, making it difficult for authorities to keep exodus like situation under check.

Mexico is scrambling to line up shipments of the Pfizer and Russian Sputnik vaccines, but no new doses are expected to arrive until mid-month. The worst situation is on the website server that has been unable to manage traffic. Mexicans are also faced with a strange delimma of how to prove they are human and not bods, as the website asks for captcha identification through symbols that Mexicans have never seen around them.

Most western countries are using an online system of registration to get their lot vaccinated. Mexico, it seems, should have used some other method to serve its own.

Mexico has received only about 760,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and has only about 89,000 of those left, many of which are earmarked for second shots.

It expects to get more Pfizer doses by mid-month, and as many as 400,000 Sputnik shots by the end of February, but they won't be enough to vaccinate even the country's 750,000 frontline health workers and represent a drop in the bucket for Mexico's population of 126 million.