The Challenge of Vaccinating Over 100 Million

México now faces an enormous pandemic challenge: to vaccinate the entire adult population of a profoundly unequal society. Other nations have based their vaccination priorities on age and occupation. In AMLO’s Mexico, the priority has been on the poor and most marginalized. Daniela Pastrana has traced the story of this biggest vaccination campaign in Mexican history. We've clipped this passage from her full Pie Página account.

Few countries in the world face the challenges Mexico does in vaccinating its population. The geography extends over a massive and irregular terrain, with some areas controlled by criminal groups, in conditions of extreme social inequality.

Mexico’s vaccination campaign started December 24, with the application of the Pfizer vaccine to medical personnel, but it slowed as the company was unable to meet demand. On February 14, 870,000 doses of AstraZeneca arrived from India, and the second phase of mass inoculation began.

Over those two weeks, the vaccine arrived to the most extensive of the poorest regions in the country, the Montaсa de Guerrero, where the virus arrived at nearly the same time as it did to Mexico City, and where we may never know how many deaths it caused. The vaccine also arrived to Afro-Mexican communities in Oaxaca; and to the oldest people, like María Antonia, a 120-year-old great grandmother who is an example for her children and grandchildren in Veracruz. It crossed the desert to arrive at the homes of the Kiliwas, one of the Indigenous nations at high risk of extinction and with only three remaining language speakers.