The doctor. Hugo Lopez-Gatell, Undersecretary of Prevention and Health Promotion, arrived this Thursday at Argentina with the aim of coordinating efforts for the production and packaging from vaccine against coronavirusCOVID-19) from the British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
During the day, he held a meeting with the president Alberto Fernandez, which he qualified as productive through your Twitter account. In addition, he thanked the Argentine president and his team for the hospitality and support during your visit.
Very productive day of work in the exchange mission with the Argentine government on vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We are very grateful to President Alberto Fernández and his team for the hospitality and support
And is that the Mexican official reported this morning that the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, entrusted him to travel to the South American country to review the protocols, technical and scientific elements and reactions in the application of the vaccine; as well as see the possibility of acquire the Russian vaccine “Sputnik V”.
For its part, Maximiliano Reyes Zúñiga, Undersecretary for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Foreign Ministry, thanked Fernández in his account for having shared with López-Gatell the experience of your country with the anticovid vaccines.
Thank you very much President Alberto Fernández for having shared with Undersecretary Hugo López-Gatell and with General Director Efraín Guadarrama Argentina’s experience with vaccines against covid-19
Another Mexican who was present at the meeting was Efrain Guadarrama, director general of American Regional Organizations and Mechanisms of the Foreign Ministry
“On the instructions of Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, I am in Buenos Aires, Argentina, accompanying Undersecretary Hugo López-Gatell on a work agenda focused on international cooperation in health matters and exchanges of information on different vaccine initiatives,” he wrote in the same platform.
It is worth mentioning that Mexico and Argentina will collaborate in the production and packaging of the AstraZeneca anticovid vaccine, thanks to an alliance with the MabXience and Liomont laboratories, which was approved by the Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris) last January 4 for his emergency use.
In this context, there is a first agreement for the acquisition of 77.4 million doses. The distribution of the drug could begin in March, since the Carlos Slim Foundation and the University of Oxford they are involved in the production of the antidote.
Costs between USD 3 and 4 per dose worldwide, compared to $ 25-37 per dose for Moderna’s vaccine and about $ 20 per dose for Pfizer’s, according to figures reported in Europe.
It is also easier to store, as can be kept in a normal fridge, like the flu vaccine, while the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine needs to be stored at a temperature of minus 70 degrees Celsius.
He UK it was the first country to allow the use of this vaccine; has already committed one hundred million doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca preparation, which will allow 50 million people to be vaccinated, since two doses are needed.
With the approval of AstraZeneca they are now two vaccines that can be used in Mexico to fight the spread of the virus.
On December 11, Cofepris itself gave authorization for the emergency use of the Pfizer vaccine.
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