During his “mañanera” press conference this morning, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) was joined virtually by his good friend, Argentine President Alberto Fernandez, to celebrate their collaboration in producing the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine for distribution in Argentina, Mexico, and all the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean. The meeting was a further reflection of the two presidents’ close friendship and working relationship, which they view as of strategic importance for the whole region. When Fernandez visited Mexico Feb. 23-26, it was announced that the two nations, in collaboration with Mexico’s Slim Foundation, had signed an agreement to produce the AstraZeneca vaccine: Argentina’s mAbxience laboratory would provide the vaccine’s active ingredient and send it to Mexico for bottling at the Liomont Laboratory with the expectation that “millions” of doses could eventually be provided to the rest of the region, as AMLO forecast.
Despite many delays, AMLO reported today that “enough batches of the AstraZeneca vaccine are being produced to send to Argentina, as well as to the nations of the Caribbean and Latin America,” telling Fernandez that “we are always going to work in solidarity and in a coordinated way with the government of Argentina, the government that you head. There are no borders; we are together, and, I would say, in the same cause—to seek the well-being of our people,” Telam news agency reported him saying. At the press conference, Infobae reported, Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard announced that by the end of this week, Mexico will receive 800,000 doses, Argentina 800,000 doses, and that from then on, the plant that produces in Mexico will be supplying Mexico, Argentina, and the rest of the region. “This is great news,” he said.
