Mexican officials celebrated the announcement on Wednesday that the country has finally developed its own COVID-19 vaccine, more than two years after vaccinations were rolled out by the United States, Europe and China.
It was unclear what use would be made of the vaccine, called ‘Patria’ or ‘Motherland’, developed in a joint effort between the government and a Mexican company, Avimex, which had previously worked on animal vaccines.
Vaccine uptake in Mexico declined precipitously in late 2022 and 2023, and Mexico still has millions of doses of the Abdala vaccine it purchased from Cuba.
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María Elena Álvarez-Buylla, head of Mexico’s government commission for science and technology, said the new vaccine would be approved for use as a booster dose. She did not say whether the government’s medical approval agency had formally approved the Patria vaccine.
Mexico has released its “Patria” vaccine for COVID-19. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano, Files)
Mexico began developing the Patria vaccine in March 2020. But testing was slow and the country ended up importing 225 million doses, mainly Astra-Zeneca and Pfizer, and some Chinese vaccines.
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Mexico bought 9 million doses of the Cuban-made Abdala vaccine in September 2022, even though it was designed for coronavirus variants circulating in 2020 or 2021, not current variants. Few Mexicans showed up to get Cuban booster shots.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has sought to make Mexico self-sufficient in many areas, while supporting Cuba however he can.
“This opens the door to recovering vaccine sovereignty,” Álvarez-Buylla said.
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The official COVID-19 death toll confirmed by testing in Mexico is nearly 334,000, but testing was scarce in the early days of the pandemic, and the government’s review of death certificates shows more than 505,000 deaths in which the COVID- 19 was listed as a contributing cause of death.
