MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -The Mexican government hopes to finalize a contract with China’s CanSino Biologics Inc for a first batch of COVID-19 vaccine doses next week, a top health ministry official said on Thursday, as the search for vaccine supplies heated up globally.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell, the government’s most prominent pandemic response official, told W Radio that the amount of vaccines Mexico aims to supply with the CanSino contract is between 10 and 35 million doses.
The range contrasts with figures given by Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard last week when he said the health ministry had signed an agreement to buy 35 million doses of CanSino’s vaccine, potentially floating the possibility of acquiring far fewer doses that originally planned.
Mexico has been especially hard-hit by the pandemic.
The government’s official count shows that fatalities due to the coronavirus surpassed 115,000 on Wednesday, the fourth highest death toll worldwide behind only the United States, Brazil and India.
(Reporting by Raul Cortes Fernandez; Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by David Gregorio)
