The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said Monday he is not against private companies buying COVID-19 vaccines and distributing them to patients willing to pay for them.
But he noted there aren’t many supplies and warned companies not to try to buy vaccines already promised to the Mexican government.
“We are not against the vaccine being marketed, as companies can import and sell it to those who have it to pay for the vaccine,” said López Obrador. “It is a question of the vaccine on the world market, because there is not enough production yet.”
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“We would oppose if the ones we contracted were delivered to a private company, we wouldn’t allow it, we would denounce it, but that’s not the case,” he added.
Mexico’s Federal Sanitary Risk Committee must approve the use of any vaccine. López Obrador pointed out that at the moment no company has requested private imports of vaccines.
But the problem is certainly already in the public arena, and experts have warned that counterfeits, fraud and theft could start to crop up amid the public’s desperation to get vaccinated.
Wal-Mart de México, the country’s largest retailer, had to issue a statement Monday denying an ad circulating online with a coronavirus “vaccine” reportedly available for about $ 20.
“We clarify that the information disseminated on social networks about the alleged delivery of the COVID-19 vaccine to our units in Mexico is incorrect,” the statement said on the company’s Twitter account.
Some people in Mexico have criticized López Obrador for centralizing the purchase and distribution of the vaccine, and for leaving the vaccination campaign in the hands of the military, as has happened with many of his government’s other programs.
The president says the military is better equipped to monitor the security and cold chain that some vaccines require.
He has also promised that the vaccines will be free and available to everyone in Mexico, but so far the country has only received about 50,000 doses of the vaccine from Pfizer. To vaccinate 1.4 million health workers, the first in line to be vaccinated, Mexico would need 2.8 million doses.
The government is pinning its hopes on three vaccines that are already in phase 3 clinical trials, or are entering them in Mexico. He announced that Novavax Inc. will conduct some of its tests in Mexico. CanSino from China and Janssen Pharmaceutical from Johnson & Johnson have also conducted trials in Mexico.