MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexico announced a huge gamble on Chinese vaccines on Tuesday, without disclosing any information about their efficacy.
Foreign Relations Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the Mexican government has signed agreements for 12 million doses of the as-yet-unapproved Sinopharm vaccine and increased contracts for the Coronavac dose of China’s Sinovac to a total of 20 million doses.
Sinovac deliveries have already begun and the full 20 million doses are expected in July. The Sinopharm vaccines must be delivered between March and June.
The total of 32 million doses, plus at least 4 million doses of the CanSino injection, would dwarf the estimated 5 million vaccine doses Mexico has obtained so far from other sources.
However, Ebrard’s office has repeatedly declined to answer questions about the effectiveness of the Chinese shots.
Sinopharm has claimed that its vaccine was 79% effective based on interim clinical trial data, but like other Chinese companies, it has not publicly released its late-phase clinical trial data.
Experts in Hong Kong have estimated the effectiveness of the Sinovac vaccine at about 51%. That shot has already been approved for use in Mexico.
The CanSino vaccine is approved in Mexico and is said to have an efficacy rate of about 65.7%,
In total, six vaccines have been approved for use in Mexico, which has received relatively small amounts of each. Mexico has only administered about 4.7 million doses of all vaccines, a small amount considering the country’s 126 million residents.
Government policy is creating the strange situation where some Mexicans, mainly in urban areas, will receive the Pfizer vaccine, which is about 95% effective, while most will receive one of the Chinese vaccines with a much lower effectiveness. Mexico has contracts for a total of about 34 million doses of the Pfizer shot, but deliveries have been slow, at less than a tenth of that amount so far.
Amid a lack of publicly available data on the vaccines in China, doubts about their effectiveness and safety are still widespread in the countries that depend on them.
Vaccinations with Chinese vaccines have already started in more than 25 countries. None of the three Chinese vaccine candidates in use worldwide has publicly released the data from their late-stage clinical trials.
Mexico has suffered nearly 190,100 confirmed deaths. However, Mexico is conducting so few tests that the government’s excess death rates suggest the actual toll was well above 220,000 in early January, when the government stopped releasing that data. Test-confirmed cases totaled more than 2.1 million.