More than 5 million COVID vaccines have not been applied in Mexico because they have expired: Health – El Financiero

More than 5 million vaccines against COVID-19 expired in Mexico, which represents 2.07 percent of the total available organic products, confirmed the Health Secretary.

“Five million 41 thousand 50 had an expired maturity (…) and which were under the protection of the biological and reactive laboratories of Mexico (Birmex) SA de CV,” the agency wrote in a statement.

Health made the clarification after the Reform Journal reported that 5 million COVID vaccines, by brands AstraZeneca and Sputnik, they would end up “in the sewer”; however, this submission does not specify whether the drugs would be phased out due to the negligence or irresponsibility of the healthcare sector.

For this, the federal agency explained the reasons why it did not use these vaccines: “some biologics suffer cold network accidents or are wasted during the day (due to electrical failures, human errors, natural disasters) or carry out their useful life without being able to be applied to the population due to lack of demand or personal preference, among other causes.

Health specified that the vast majority of expired doseprior to its application, correspond to the vaccines donated by AstraZeneca 3.4 million (68 percent of the total expired vaccines in Birmex) and the rest corresponds to Sputnik V.

In the case of the Sputnik V doses, he said, a further reason complicating their application was the delay in the delivery of component 2 by the manufacturing laboratory, “which implied that due to the uncertainty of completion of the schemes , the beginning of the primary cycle vaccination schemes with component 1 ″.

He also added that, of the total number of vaccines received, 79 percent (192.8 million) corresponds to bilateral contracts with each of the pharmaceutical companies; nine percent (20.8 million) to donations received from other countries and 12 percent to Covax’s multilateral cooperation.