Hugo López-Gatell, who faces criminal accusations in Mexico for the management of the Covid-19 pandemic, is about to take the plane that takes him to Geneva. President Claudia Sheinbaum invented a position and will send it as a link of the representation of Mexico in the United Nations Technical Organizations, before the World Health Organization. You should not do it.
New information about your management as Tsar of Coronavirus It demonstrates a systematic sabotage to prevent the doses against the virus from arriving quickly. The probable result: the fourth wave of coronaviruswhich produced that almost one in two Mexicans were infected.
López-Gatell has not rendered accounts for what he did in the pandemic, dizzy with Zalamerías the then President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, locked in his ignorance and proclivity for the anti-science.
In April 2021, with seven thousand 300 cases of infected with the virus, in what was the first wave of the Pandemia, López Obrador commissioned the Foreign Secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, to look for doses to avoid the infections. He chose to work with the United Nations Organization and with international mechanisms such as COVAX, an initiative to accelerate the development and production of tests, treatments and vaccines against COVID-19.
As part of that cooperation, Mexico achieved in October of that year to access a wide variety of dose in phase II, which act as protective shields –Pfizer, Cansino and Astrazeneca, among others. They never arrived. Three trades confirm the rejection of the Ministry of Health to those vaccines:
1.- On October 1, Martha Leticia Caballero, in charge of the Office of the General Directorate of International Relations of the Ministry of Health, notified Martha Delgado, Undersecretary for multilateral matters, which was the Ebrard operator to negotiate vaccines, of rejection- without any explanation- of two million 707 thousand 200 additional doses of the Astrazeneca vaccine Pfizer Biontech offered COVAX.
2.- On November 11, Caballero informed Delgado that a new assignment of Astrazeneca through the mechanism, for a total of three million 912 thousand vaccines, would not be accepted because it had “a surplus” of doses directly acquired to the company, “so (there was a risk of not having a white population for its application during the validity of its expiration.”
3.- On December 21, once again Caballero told Delgado who did not accept the new assignment of Astrazeneca through the COVAX mechanism for a total of seven million 833 thousand 600 doses, without explaining the reasons for the decision either.
According to former officials with first-hand knowledge of the dose negotiations, López-Gatell rejected Pfizer Biontech’s proposal for prejudices, which forced Mexico to negotiate with haste and under pressure what would have in the market. In public, the Tsar of the coronavirus He said that this laboratory had had great advances in his vaccine, but there were difficulties in acquiring them due to the expensive freezing systems that he required for maintenance.
In those days he also rejected an offer of modern vaccines at very accessible prices, according to people who knew details of the talks, arguing that their technology was similar to that of Pfizer, so they would be redundant.
Mexico also had access to vaccines produced by the Chinese laboratory Cansino Biologics, which tested its dose in phase III in December 2021 in Mexico, because López-Gatell, according to the same sources, had wielded xenophobic arguments and delayed its approval in Cofepris, although they had delivered all the clinical information.
Between October and November 2021, the Ministry of Health, headed by Jorge Alcocer – which was a stone figure in the handling of the pandemic – rejected almost 17 million doses of Covax, which coincided with the fourth wave of the pandemic, the most severe when having to face the aggressive variant of the joy. The peak was reached on January 20, 2022, when the number of infected reached 484 thousand 398 cases per million Mexicans.
López Obrador intervened directly so that López-Gatell lifted the blockade to Cansino, which offered a single dose and without the need for cooling, which was planned to apply to teachers and in the most inaccessible and vulnerable regions of the country. The laboratory worked for 12 weeks to have the doses on its plant in Querétaro, while the tsar of the coronavirus He continued to claim at weekly meetings in the National Palace that would take more than two years to have a vaccine and that would be impossible to finish the biological process in Mexico.
They were not the only ones affected by López-Gatell’s decisions endorsed by López Obrador. According to former officials, the Chinese Laboratory Syovac offered to help stop infections and infant mortality, in addition to generating extra barriers against COVID-19. López-Gatell, they added once again, refused to authorize their entrance, arguing that it was unnecessary to vaccinate the children, and that the pressures to be applied dose before returning to face-to-face classes, came from a sector that wanted to stay with remote school activities, which favored the business of pharmacists who were looking to sell more doses. In cabinet meetings, meanwhile, the information of children’s deaths continued to arrive.
Sabotages made by López-Gatell were probably part of the lost lives in pandemic and excess mortality, but also left 97 million dollars prepaid to Covax.
By then, his star began to lose brightness. The then head of government of Mexico City faced him in the cabinet and persuaded López Obrador that his strategy was equivocal. With their negatives growing, they began to hide from public opinion.
López-Gatell, who won the nickname Death doctorwas in ostracism until the president revived with the appointment in Geneva, which caused strong criticism. Do not pay those costs and lower it from the plane, which will earn applause and recognition.