Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquín González criticized the national vaccination strategy during a meeting with federal officials on Thursday for what he described as a lack of flexibility.
Speaking at a virtual meeting also attended by other state governors, Joaquín described Quintana Roo as a “very young state” where the majority of the population is under 60, and consequently has a surplus of vaccines sent by the federal government for the exclusive inoculation of seniors.
He complained that there is no flexibility in the strategy to use any surplus doses to vaccinate people aged under 60, asserting that it made no sense not to use them when there are unvaccinated medical personnel and tourism sector workers in the Caribbean coast state.
“I have [private sector] doctors protesting and asking for vaccines. I have requests from tourism personnel who want them,” Joaquín said.
The governor also said the federal government hasn’t kept up with its scheduled vaccine deliveries.
“Some weeks ago, [Finance] Minister Arturo Herrera gave us a schedule of weekly vaccine deliveries across the country; I would like to have an update on that, if there is one, because these [promised] vaccine deliveries haven’t been met 100%,” Joaquín said.
Later on Thursday, the federal government announced that it had modified its Covid-19 vaccination schedule, pushing back by one month the start date of the different stages of the national vaccination plan.
At the federal Health Ministry’s coronavirus press briefing on Thursday night, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell addressed the first of Joaquín’s concerns, saying that members of the federal government’s “roadrunner” vaccination brigades have the authority to instruct that surplus vaccines be used to inoculate other priority sectors of the population such as health workers.
But in light of the governor’s claim that surplus vaccines are not being used in Quintana Roo, López-Gatell said that he would discuss the matter with the federal government’s delegates in that state.
Source: Reforma (sp)
