Eager for Covid shot, man uses tricycle cart to take his wife to vaccination center

Determined to have his wife vaccinated against Covid-19, a 75-year-old Celaya resident transported the 83-year-old woman with a tricycle cart to a vaccination center where health authorities were immunizing seniors in the Guanajuato city.

Although the couple live near the auditorium where immunizations were taking place, state officials said, Hernández delivered his wife because she has Parkinson’s disease and cannot move on her own, according to the newspaper Milenio.

Seferino Hernández Hurtado and Galina Uribe Estrada arrived at the center around 5 a.m., where they waited for a while before receiving their shots.

The couple, who have been married for more than 50 years, were among Celaya’s first residents to be vaccinated.

The story triggered both news stories and social media posts, with some people reacting to the story as evidence of the power and endurance of true love, and others responding negatively, commenting that the couple’s story was an example of the alleged lack of organization of the Covid-19 vaccination process.

Some commenters online decried the amount of time that seniors had to wait to be immunized and the fact that the couple had to leave their house at all to be vaccinated.

“They are incapable of guaranteeing proper access to health to the people of Guanajuato, and even more to people like [the couple],” said one Facebook user. “How many hours did they have to be waiting in line to be the first [to be vaccinated]? And with their age and in their condition! You are romanticizing ineptitude!”

As of Tuesday, 3.7 million of Mexico’s seniors had received one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to Health Ministry data. President López Obrador predicted on Monday that all the nation’s seniors will have received at least one dose by the end of April.

Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell also announced Monday that starting in April, the government will immunize up to 600,000 of the nation’s 15 million seniors per day, based on expectations that the number of doses arriving weekly will about double starting next month.

Mexico has to date received almost 7.2 million doses after a shipment of 667,875 Pfizer shots arrived in Mexico City Tuesday morning.

Source: Milenio (sp)