At the morning press conference led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard summarized the agreements between Mexico and the pharmaceutical companies whose clinical trials of the Covid-19 vaccine are the most advanced. He reported on the operation to calibrate the measures for storing, distributing and administering the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, in accordance with the National Vaccination Plan designed by the Mexican government.

Foreign Minister Ebrard pointed out that Mexico is the first Latin American country  with access to the vaccine. The country has an agreement with Pfizer to gradually acquire up to 34,400,000 vaccines. The first 3,000 doses arrived yesterday.  These will go to the health sector, for it to test the process of training personnel, refrigeration, distribution and administration of the vaccine. The Foreign Minister stressed that "we can't keep an inventory, because it needs to be kept ultra-cold, and we can't use the dry ice boxes for distribution for too long, so this has to be very precisely organized."

An additional 50,000 doses will arrive next week and so on, until 1,420,575 have been received in December 2020 and January 2021. This will be sufficient for the health workers who will be the first to be vaccinated because they are fighting the Coronavirus pandemic on the frontlines.

Foreign Minister Ebrard continued by reviewing the status of the agreements between Mexico and various pharmaceutical companies.

The AstraZeneca-University of Oxford vaccine: authorization for emergency use in Europe is expected by late January 2021. Mexico pre-purchased 77.4 million doses, with the fill/finish taking place in Mexico.

CanSino Biologics: This company has already submitted its file to the Federal Commission for Protection against Health Risks (Cofepris) for analysis. It will present the first results of its phase III clinical trial in January in order to request emergency use authorization.

The multilateral Covax portfolio of vaccine candidates: On December 18, the global initiative announced that it will be able to offer participants doses for 3% of their population during the first four months of 2021. Mexico has pre-purchased 51.5 million doses.

Various vaccines are in phase 3 trials in Mexico: CanSino Biologics began this phase on October 29 with just over 8,000 volunteers to date.  Janssen (United States) began its phase 3 trial on November 29, with a first group of 400 volunteers of a total of 2,000. Novavax (United States) and Curevac (Germany) are waiting for authorization from Cofepris, and on December 9 the Russian Sputnik V vaccine submitted its request to Cofepris to start its phase 3 trial.

The Foreign Ministry reaffirms its commitment to contributing to universal, timely and equitable access to the COVID-19 vaccine.