MEXICO CITY (AP) — 4 out of 5 folks in Mexico who obtained influenza photographs to this point this 12 months turned down the federal government’s suggestion that they get Russian or Cuban COVID-19 boosters on the similar time, officers mentioned Tuesday.
Assistant Well being Secretary Ruy López Ridaura attributed the excessive refusal fee to folks being reluctant to get two vaccines on the similar time.
“Folks have a sure reluctance to get simultaneous vaccinations,” López Ridaura mentioned.
However the inhabitants eligible for flu and COVID-19 photographs — folks over 60 and folks with underlying well being issues — are thought of high-risk, and Mexicans in these teams had extraordinarily excessive take-up charges for Covid vaccines in 2021 and 2022, in response to the Well being Division.
Some folks seem to easily mistrust the Russian Sputnik and Cuban Abdala vaccines, each designed in 2020 for variants prevalent on the time.
“It’s an previous antigen, it is as in the event that they had been going to present me an influenza vaccine from 2020,” mentioned Andreu Comas, a professor of medication on the Autonomous College of San Luis Potosi. “There aren’t any research concerning the effectiveness of each of those vaccines towards the (present) variants.”
Mexico has purchased thousands and thousands of doses of the Russian and Cuban vaccines. The unique plan was to manage round 20 million photographs, however solely about 1.9 million folks, or 9.5% of these eligible, have agreed to take them for the reason that vaccination marketing campaign began in mid-October.
In distinction, 10 million folks obtained the influenza shot in the identical interval.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been a giant supporter of Cuba, hiring Cuban medical doctors, shopping for vaccines and development supplies from Cuba and supplying oil to the island.
In the meantime, Mexico has held up approval for Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 boosters, each of which had been designed to work towards the COVID variants presently circulating. Whereas these photographs have been permitted to be used in the USA since September, they will not be out there for Mexicans till 2024.
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Comply with AP’s protection of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
