Mexico Promotes Universal Access to COVID-19 Vaccines

Mexico's Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard on Thursday said his country is promoting universal access to COVID-19 vaccines because a few nations are hoarding most of the doses currently available.

RELATED:

Mexico Aims For Long-Term Cooperation With Russia

"It's a very, very unfair situation right now. Only a few countries have about 85 percent of the doses in the world. A very unfair situation. So we are working hard to change it as quickly as possible," Ebrard stressed during a lecture he gave at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The Mexican government is in contact with other Latin American countries to remedy this circumstance, said Ebrard, who gave as an example the case of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

"They don't have any vaccines right now," he stressed while pointing out that Mexico sent respirators to this Caribbean country on Thursday.

Ebrard recalled that Mexico presented a resolution at the UN to guarantee global and equitable access to vaccines. His country also supports several multilateral initiatives, including the COVAX mechanism promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The Mexican diplomat traveled to Russia to accelerate the supply of the Sputnik V vaccine to his country and to negotiate the packaging of this vaccine in the Latin American country from May or June.

In January, Russia agreed to supply 24 million doses of Sputnik V to Mexico. So far, however, only 1.1 million of these products have been delivered.