MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico will begin bottling and packaging the Russian COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V, Mexico Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Wednesday during a visit to Russia.
Mexico has already received more than 1 million doses of Sputnik V in recent months. Ebrard said the state-owned company Birmex is working with the Russian Direct Investment Fund to prepare the bottling operations.
Mexico has already been bottling the Chinese-developed CanSino vaccine.
The domestic finishing of vaccines is part of Mexico’s efforts to obtain more shots. In addition to Sputnik V and CanSino, Mexico has been using the Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines.
The country has received 16.6 million doses and given some 12 million jabs, coverng about 9.4% of the population. Mexico has vaccinated many of its senior citizens and plans to begin vaccinating people between the ages of 50 and 59 in May.
Mexico has suffered 215,000 COVID-19 deaths confirmed by testing, but concedes that the real number is far higher because of limited testing.
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