MEXICO CITY, Aug 10 ― The US government will send additional Covid-19 vaccines to Mexico, a Biden administration official said yesterday, as Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and US Vice President Kamala Harris spoke by telephone.
Earlier, Lopez Obrador said he and Harris would discuss reopening the US-Mexico border, immigration and vaccines against Covid-19, new cases of which have jumped in Mexico.
Speaking at a regular morning news conference, the president said vaccinations along Mexico's border with the United States had led to fewer hospitalizations and deaths despite rising infections on both sides of the border.
“This is what I'm going to suggest today, that we can demonstrate that we're not putting the population at risk,” Lopez Obrador said in the northern city of Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Speaking before the bilateral call, which began at 4pm (2100 GMT), a senior US official said Washington would send more vaccines to Mexico, potentially from multiple manufacturers, including Moderna Inc and AstraZeneca.
The United States has already lent a few million vaccine doses to Mexico, and would be sharing more with it than with any other country, reflecting the importance it attached to the bilateral relationship, the official said.
The countries' 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border has been closed to non-essential travel since early in the coronavirus pandemic last year. ― Reuters
