US, Mexico COVID-19 vaccine sharing? Not yet, President Biden says

EL PASO, Texas – A Canadian cargo jet landed in Mexico City on Tuesday, taxied to a cease and met the type of fanfare sometimes afforded to heads of state, with authorities officers and a gaggle of press awaiting its arrival.

Aboard the aircraft: refrigerated metal containers full of 852,150 doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

“It’s the most vaccines we’ve received in any week,” Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s secretary of overseas relations, posted on Twitter, adopted by a 32-minute video of the cargo’s touchdown. “We keep going.”

A 12 months right into a pandemic that pressured a partial closure of the U.S.-Mexico border, Mexico’s capacity to vaccinate its residents stands as a vital problem within the bilateral relationship, underpinning discussions over an eventual reopening of the border.

Mexico has been gradual to safe and distribute vaccines, administering 2.6 million doses within the nation of 117 million residents.

This week, the U.S. topped 80 million administered doses, in response to knowledge from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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The imbalance between neighbors is felt acutely on the El Paso-Juárez border, the place well being authorities in El Paso County, Texas, have vaccinated more than 138,000 people with a primary dose and 84,000more with two doses, whereas federal authorities in Juárez have vaccinated quite a few well being care staff however not the general public at massive.

The metropolitan space contains almost 840,000 folks in El Paso County and 1.4 million folks in Juárez, in response to U.S. and Mexico census figures.

After well being care staff, Mexico’s nationwide vaccine technique is concentrated on rural seniors and it is unclear when the vaccine will arrive for the general public in Juárez. The nation’s protection ministry, tasked with distributing the vaccine, did not reply to requests for the precise variety of doses administered in Juárez, and Chihuahua state well being authorities declined to say.

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US focuses on getting ‘each American’ vaccinated

Before their virtual meeting on Monday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador advised reporters he deliberate to ask President Joe Biden to share the nation’s vaccine stash with its southern neighbor.

The White House rapidly swept that concept off the desk.

“The administration’s focus is on ensuring that every American is vaccinated, and once we accomplish that objective we’re happy to discuss further steps beyond that,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki stated throughout a Monday press briefing forward of the bilateral assembly.

Later, in a readout of the decision, the White House stated the 2 leaders “agreed to deepen cooperation on pandemic response, including by enhancing public health capabilities, information sharing and the development of border policies.”

In the borderland, the place communities on both facet of the worldwide line are inextricably linked, Mexico’s vaccine program is sort of as essential to public well being on the U.S. facet because the homegrown one, specialists say.

“Juárez is still struggling with the vaccine,” stated Ricardo Samaniego, El Paso County Judge. “We’re not going to solve it until we realize that Chihuahua is going to have a real difficult time.”

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Mexico has vaccinated most of its well being care workforce. The subsequent precedence group is adults over age 60. But López Obrador’s nationwide vaccine technique — targeted on distribution to marginalized, rural communities — has thus far left Mexican border cities within the lurch, regardless that they’ve been particularly hard-hit by the pandemic.

“How is vaccination going? It’s been complicated,” Dr. Mirna Beltran, undersecretary for preventative drugs with the Chihuahua state well being authority, stated in a information convention final week. “We’re starting in places that are hard for our health care workers to reach.

“We nonetheless do not know when the vaccine will attain Juárez,” she said. “Remember that these vaccines depend upon international manufacturing. We hope that within the coming weeks it arrives in Juárez.”

Mexico is distributing five vaccines, including Pfizer’s, the AstraZeneca vaccine, a Russian version and two Chinese formulas. In an effort to gain more control over its program, Mexico is standing up a factory to produce China’s CanSinoBio vaccine, and the first vials are supposed to come available by the end of March, Ebrard reported on Tuesday.

The U.S. hasn’t engaged much in “vaccine science diplomacy,” as has occurred in previous pandemics when rich countries would extend their influence through vaccination campaigns, according a report on global vaccine distribution produced by the Council on Foreign Relations.

The wealthiest nations are instead rushing to secure supplies for themselves: The World Bank reports that 82% of nations administering vaccines fall into the high-income or upper-middle-income category. Countries below the middle-income level could go without widespread access until 2022 or 2023.

The U.S. implemented restrictions on non-essential travel at land ports of entry in March last year. Effectively, U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents and those with work or student visas could continue to cross while Mexican nationals with tourist cards could not.

Mexico has kept its border crossings open.

Thousands of U.S. citizens live on the Mexican side of the border. Even with restrictions on non-essential travel at ports of entry border-wide, hundreds of thousands of people crisscross for work, school and family obligations.

“The precedence is guaranteeing that as many vaccines get into the arms of Americans as doable after which broadening that to assist different international locations,” said U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-El Paso). “My precedence is to ensure now we have a plan and have sources for border communities. We’re not going to have the ability to safely open (the border) till now we have that plan in place.”

Escobar was expected to submit a bill Thursday called the “Binational Health Strategies Act” that, among other things, asks the Biden administration to engage Mexico on public health and requests that a COVID-19 vaccine “be disbursed all through the United States-Mexico Border Area, considering the assorted weak populations within the area.”

In El Paso and Juárez, authorities confronted the pandemic at its start with restrictions on daily life that mirrored one another — but that fell apart as state and national politics forked in different directions.

El Paso eventually ramped up COVID-19 testing capacity, while Juárez opted for more stringent restrictions, including public curfews and business closures.

Chihuahua state has been slowly reopening businesses as infections decrease, recently permitting restaurants and bars to stay open past midnight. But the state continues to enforce strict capacity restrictions, 60% at restaurants and 30% at bars.

On Tuesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced he would lift a statewide mask mandate on March 10 and said businesses could reopen 100%.

“We all the time discuss ‘region, region, region,'” said Samaniego. “If ever we are supposed to look at Chihuahua, El Paso and Las Cruces, as a single region, it’s proper now.”

Follow reporter Lauren Villagran on Twitter: @laurenvillagran

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