The Covid vaccination program began in recent days in three heavily populated municipalities in México state, Jalisco and Guerrero, while seniors in some other major centers will have the opportunity to get a jab in the coming days.
The rollout in Coacalco, a México state municipality that borders Mexico City to the north, began on Wednesday and authorities plan to inoculate more than 27,000 residents aged 60 or older in the space of a week.
The program will commence in the México state municipalities of Nezahualcóyotl and Texcoco, both of which are also in the greater Mexico City metropolitan area, on Friday and Saturday, respectively.
In Jalisco, the first anti-Covid shots were given in Tonalá, a municipality that borders Guadalajara, on Monday. Authorities hope to administer more than 40,000 shots there but the first day of the rollout didn’t go as smoothly as hoped.
Vaccines were administered in Tlaquepaque, another Guadalajara area municipality, last week but at least 2,000 seniors missed out on a shot due to a lack of supply, the newspaper La Jornada reported. Vaccination started Wednesday in 11 other Jalisco municipalities including San Juan de Los Lagos, Jocotepec, Ciudad Guzmán and Chapala.
Seniors in Guadalajara will begin rolling up their sleeves for shots starting this Saturday. More than 80,000 vaccine doses have been allocated to Jalisco’s capital and largest city but the population of seniors is almost triple that number at 238,500, according to the 2020 census.
Unlike many other locations, Guadalajara will not designate scheduled vaccination days for seniors depending on the first letter of their surname. With the population of seniors well above the number of doses that will be available there are predictions of chaotic scenes in the municipality on Saturday.
“When you organize your vaccination centers to attend to 80,000 people and three times more arrive it’s obvious there will be a problem,” said public health expert Carlos Alonso Reynoso.
Vaccinations will be administered at the following locations in Guadalajara starting Saturday: Parque Agua Azul, the CODE Alcalde sports center, Parque San Jacinto, Parque Ávila Camacho, the CODE Paradero Sports Center, Antigua Penal de Oblatos, Explanada del Instituto Cultural Cabañas, Centro Universitario de Arte, Arquitectura y Diseño and Museo del Ejército a la Fuerza Aérea.
The vaccine rollout will also begin Saturday in Morelia, Michoacán, at 11 different vaccination centers. A list of them is published on the Michoacán Health Ministry website.
Meanwhile, vaccination is already underway in Acapulco, Guerrero, where the first shots were given to seniors on Wednesday.
A total of 23,520 vaccine doses will be available in the resort city between Wednesday and Monday. Seniors with surnames starting with A were eligible for inoculation on Wednesday, those with last names beginning with B are being vaccinated today and those with surnames starting with C will be inoculated Friday and next Monday.
There are five vaccination centers in Acapulco. They are Centro de convenciones, Unidad deportiva de Acapulco, Tecnológico de Acapulco, Unidad deportiva Jorge Campos and Forum Mundo Imperial.
Almost 3.3 million seniors across Mexico have received at least one vaccine dose, according to data presented by the Health Ministry on Wednesday night, and about 17,000 have received two.
Mexico has so far used four different vaccines to inoculate health workers, seniors and teachers. They are the Pfizer, Sinovac, Sputnik V and AstraZeneca. A total of 4.7 million doses had been administered by Wednesday night.
Source: El Financiero (sp), La Jornada (sp), El Universal (sp), El Informador (sp), Uno TV (sp)
