Mexico begins its mass vaccination campaign, becoming the first Latin American country to do so.
María Ramírez, a nurse, was the first person in Mexico to get vaccinated for Covid-19. “This is the best gift that I could have received in 2020,” she said.
María Ramírez, a nurse, was the first person in Mexico to get vaccinated for Covid-19. “This is the best gift that I could have received in 2020,” she said.Credit…Eduardo Verdugo/Associated Press
Mexico began its coronavirus vaccination campaign on Thursday, becoming the first country in Latin America to do so, and providing a sliver of hope to the population amid a roaring resurgence of the virus.
María Irene Ramírez, 59, the head nurse at the Ruben Leñero hospital in Mexico City, was the first person in the country to get the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, as part of the government’s strategy to focus first on health care workers in December and January before moving on to the older Mexicans considered most at risk.
“This is the best gift that I could have received in 2020,” Ms. Ramírez said during the ceremony, which was broadcast on national television. “We are afraid, but we have to keep going because someone has to face this fight, and I am willing to continue in the line of fire.”
Latin America has become an epicenter of the pandemic, with inequality, a large informal work force, densely packed cities and a fragile health system hindering efforts to stop the spread of the virus and treat the sick.
Countries in the region, led by Brazil and Mexico, racked up some the of the world’s highest death tolls as economies crumbled under the weight of lockdowns and government mismanagement.
The first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine also arrived in Costa Rica overnight, and Chile is expecting its first 10,000 doses vaccine on Thursday. In Argentina, the first 300,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V landed in Buenos Aires on Thursday morning.
The vaccination effort in Mexico is starting as a vicious new wave of the virus has packed hospitals and led authorities to call for a lockdown in the capital, Mexico City, and in four other states. More than 120,000 people have died nationwide, although limited testing means the true count could be much higher.
— Oscar Lopez The New York Times