Wearing the mask and suit of his favorite lucha libre wrestler helped an eight-year-old Oaxaca boy overcome the fear of getting a COVID-19 shot.
Dressed as Psycho Clown, Miguel Ángel Carrasco Echeverría was vaccinated Wednesday in Tuxtepec, Oaxaca’s second largest city.
He closed his eyes when a nurse administered the vaccine but didn’t shed a single tear, according to a report by the Milenio newspaper, which described the inoculation as the longest four seconds of Miguel’s short life.
Géminis Echeverría posted a video to social media of her brave son getting his shot and holding cotton wool against the injection site on his upper arm.
Miguel was one of hundreds of children aged five to 11 who got COVID shots Wednesday in Tuxtepec. Accompanied by their parents or grandparents, many lined up for hours in sweltering heat to get a dose of Pfizer’s vaccine, the only shot authorized for use on children in Mexico.
After long maintaining that vaccinating young children against COVID-19 wasn’t necessary, the federal government announced last month that it would offer shots to minors aged five to 11.
A fifth wave of coronavirus infections is currently spreading across Mexico, where there are more than 185,000 active cases, according to federal Health Ministry estimates. An additional 31,116 new cases were reported Wednesday, the first time since February that the daily count exceeded 30,000.
The Health Ministry also reported 60 COVID fatalities, which lifted the official death toll to 325,928. Accumulated case numbers total 6.15 million.
An official with the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) said Wednesday the end of the fifth wave is near, predicting it would be peak during the week of July 17.
With reports from Milenio and El Financiero
