Macron pledges everyone in France will ben offered vaccine by end of summer; Merkel says all approved vaccines welcome after Russian Sputnik posts strong data; ‘vaccine nationalism harmful for all’, says WHO
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Mexico was on the verge of approving the Russian coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V following the publication of early results of an advanced study, Mexican officials said Tuesday.
AP: Assistant Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell, the government’s pandemic spokesman, said the health ministry signed a contract Monday for 400,000 doses of Sputnik V that will arrive this month. He said regulatory approval was expected within hours.
It couldn’t come a moment too soon. Mexico has been hit so hard that hospitals in the capital were 87% full, and ambulance drivers waited hours to find an open bed for patients.
“Unfortunately, because of the saturation of the hospitals and the phone lines, we are waiting about three or four hours before they can assign us a hospital, and to get there,” said ambulance crew chief Eduardo Vigueras.
Vigueras noted patients are sometimes sent to the only available beds at hospitals, far away from the overwhelmed east side borough of Iztapalapa. He said some relatives get angry and aggressive with paramedics because of the delays in treatment.
Because some patients are in such bad shape, some families make an even harder choice. Paramedics say they often go to pick up a seriously ill coronavirus patient only to find their loved ones want to cancel the emergency call, because they know treatment is in such short supply and they may never see their relative again.
Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel has said “all vaccines” approved by the EU’s medicines regulator are welcome, including Russian and Chinese shots, Reuters reports.
In a TV interview, she said Germany welcomed the strong data from trials of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.
Every vaccine that is approved by the European Medicines Agency is welcome. I’ve spoken to the Russian president about this. We saw good data today [about the Russian vaccine]. Every vaccine is welcome in the EU as long as it is approved by the EMA.
