People waiting to receive the second dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine during a mass vaccination in Mexico City, Mexico [File: Henry Romero/Reuters]

Mexico City, June 16 (RHC)-- Mexico plans to gradually lift pandemic-related restrictions along its shared border with the United States as it progresses in vaccinating the local population against COVID-19, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Tuesday.

Ebrard said the reopening of the border will be discussed with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas who arrived in Mexico late on Monday.  “Mexico is going to make an extraordinary vaccination effort in order for our cities to have similar standards to those of the United States in terms of vaccination,” Ebrard said during a regular news conference.

The goal is to ensure Mexico’s frontier cities have the same level of protection against COVID-19 as US cities so there is no longer an argument to uphold restrictions, Ebrard said.   “Once we reach that stage which will begin today all along the border, there would be no sanitary argument to maintain these restrictions,” he said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Mexico received a consignment of some 1.35 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccines from the U.S. that will go towards inoculating Mexican border residents aged 18 and above, the government said.

The vaccine shipment will be used to vaccinate anyone over the age of 18 in four cities along the US border: Tijuana, Mexicali, Ciudad Juarez and Reynosa.  The U.S. and Mexico have restricted border crossings to essential travel since early in the pandemic. But pressure is now building on both countries to ease those restrictions in order to resume commercial traffic.

The issue of border closures is tied to concerns about migration and Mayorkas is expected to hold a series of meetings with Mexican officials on Tuesday in an effort to find ways to curb migration to the United States.