Russia to supply Mexico with 24M doses of COVID vaccine

By Jorge Antonio Rocha

MEXICO (AA) - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced Monday that Russia will send 24 million doses of its Sputnik V vaccine.

After a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Lopez Obrador said on Twitter he thanked his Russian counterpart for agreeing to supply Mexico with millions of doses for the following two months.

The Mexican leader also said he invited Putin to visit Mexico.

The phone call came a day after the Mexican president tested positive for COVID-19.

Earlier in the day, Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard announced that the phone call was “polite and successful," adding that Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell could secure the arrival of the Russian vaccine now with the support of the Russian government.

Lopez-Gatell had earlier this month traveled to Argentina in order to study the experience as well as technical and scientific elements of the Russian vaccine in the Latin American country.

There are up to 1.9 million positive cases and 168,858 deaths in Mexico, according to the National Council of Science and Technology. So far Mexico has inoculated over 629,626 health workers at COVID-19 hospitals.