CAMPECHE, Mexico – In recent weeks, thousands of public school teachers lined up in front of schools and hospitals in this southern state as Navy helicopters buzzed with a precious shipment sent exclusively for them by the Mexican President: Covid-19- vaccines.
The government’s own guidelines call for first-line hospital workers and seniors to be stabbed first in the hard-hit cities of Mexico. But teachers in rural Mexico are an important ballot box.
Critics of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador say that vaccinating teachers ahead of all doctors is the latest evidence of how the left-wing president is playing politically with vaccinations in a country with the third highest official Covid-19 death toll in the world, nearly 180,000. And instead of health workers in charge, according to customary protocol, Mr. López Obrador officials from her “Servants of the Nation” welfare department, identified by the vests they wear with Mexico’s national emblem.
Campeche is one of the major states where midterm elections are held in June. Polls show Mr López Obrador’s Morena party has a chance to sack the former ruling PRI that has ruled Campeche since the late 1920s. While many countries have made teachers a priority for vaccination programs during the coronavirus pandemic, they are usually not ahead of health professionals.
In hospitals, health workers are outraged that the government vaccinated teachers while nearly half of the state’s doctors and nurses were still waiting.