The shipment is the second donation of the anticovid-19 vaccine to Central America, after Belize received a similar one in early June. | Photo: @SRE_mx

Mexico City, June 25 (RHC)-- The Government of Mexico has sent a donation of 400,800 doses of anti-COVID-19 vaccine -- Astrazeneca -- to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.  Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs Marcelo Ebrard made the announcement on Thursday through his official Twitter account.

"It is a donation of doses packaged in Mexico, and whose active substance was elaborated in Argentina," the foreign minister specified about the drug, which plans the delivery of 150,000 doses to Guatemala and Honduras, and another 100,800 to El Salvador, in Mexican Air Force airplanes.

The Pan American Health Organization, PAHO, in a June 8th report stated that the health situation related to the coronavirus pandemic has become critical in Caribbean and Central American nations, and warned that if the current trend persists it will take years to control it.

Last week, Honduras announced that Mexico had notified it of the donation of vaccines to reinforce its immunization campaign, in response to a request from the Honduran government.

Meanwhile, in Guatemala, only 3.8 percent of the population have received at least one dose of an antiviral drug; in Honduras, this percentage is 4.9 percent; and in El Salvador 22.3 percent, according to statistics provided by the respective Ministries of Health. 

On June 12th, Mexico donated a similar amount of Astrazeneca doses to Belize, Bolivia and Paraguay, actions derived from the Humanitarian Mission program through which Mexico will deliver this vaccine against Covid-19 to countries in the region.

"We are convinced that intra-regional solidarity must prevail in times of great crisis," said Martha Delgado, Mexico's Undersecretary for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, in a press release at the time.