Mexico Says U.S. Is Sending 8.5 Million Shots Amid Border Talks
Mexico Says U.S. Is Sending 8.5 Million Shots Amid Border Talks
(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. will send Mexico a new batch of as many as 8.5 million vaccines from Moderna Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc. as both countries step up efforts to fight a surge of Covid-19 cases and reopen the border.
Mexico will receive 3.5 million Moderna shots and as many as 5 million AstraZeneca vaccines from the U.S., Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Tuesday. The announcement comes a day after Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador held a phone conversation with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.
“With this, we are going to be able to continue forward. They’re helping us, and these kinds of acts are humanitarian ones,” AMLO, as the president is known, told reporters during his daily press briefing. “We are grateful to the government of the United States.”
The Mexican government has been speeding up its vaccination program in states neighboring the U.S. in an attempt to reopen the border, one of the world’s busiest crossings of trade and people, which has been partially shut since the start of the pandemic. Mexico expects to vaccinate all adults in areas along the border within a month, AMLO Said.
As part of bilateral negotiations, Mexican authorities will meet on Tuesday with top Biden administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Juan Gonzalez, senior director for the Western Hemisphere on the National Security Council.
Talks in Mexico City will focus on both migration and the border reopening, Ebrard said. While the U.S. is interested in reopening all land crossings with Mexico, it won’t likely happen this month, Ebrard said.
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