BEIJING: Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the Health Ministry signed an agreement to buy 35 million doses of Chinese firm CanSino Biologics’ COVID-19 vaccine, CGTN reported on Thursday.
Ebrard, who made the announcement on Twitter, had previously said Mexico aimed to ink the deal this week.
Mexico on Wednesday confirmed 11,974 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the national total to 1,205,229, according to the Health Ministry. The country’s death toll from the virus has increased by 781 to 111,655.
Earlier, the United Arab Emirates issued the first government approval of a Chinese coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday, citing preliminary data showing that it was 86 percent effective, a move that could bring Chinese vaccines a step closer to widespread use.
The announcement by the Emirates’ Ministry of Health and Prevention was the first official indicator of a Chinese vaccine’s potential to help stop the pandemic. If results from elsewhere show similar findings, the Chinese vaccines could offer a lifeline to developing countries that cannot afford vaccines from the United States that are likely to be more expensive and more difficult to transport.
But Chinese officials and Sinopharm, the state-owned maker of the vaccine, were silent on Wednesday on the Emirati disclosures. And scientists noted that the announcement was lacking in data and other critical details.
The news that a Chinese vaccine is 86 percent effective — exceeding the 50 percent threshold set by many governments — is a boost to China’s biomedical ambitions. But it falls short of the performance reported by the American drug makers Pfizer and Moderna, which said earlier that their vaccines were more than 90 percent effective at protecting against the coronavirus.
–The Daily Mail-CGTN News exchange item
