FILE PHOTO: A general view of the Zaragoza-Ysleta border bridge crossing towards El Paso, Texas, U.S., as Mexico’s Department of Foreign Relations requested another month-long extension on land-crossing restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico October 19, 2020. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez
August 9, 2021
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -The U.S. government will send additional COVID-19 vaccines to Mexico, a Biden administration official said on Monday, as Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris spoke by telephone.
Earlier, Lopez Obrador said he and Harris would discuss reopening the U.S.-Mexico border, immigration and vaccines against COVID-19, new cases of which have jumped in Mexico.
Speaking at a regular morning news conference, the president said vaccinations along Mexico’s border with the United States had led to fewer hospitalizations and deaths despite rising infections on both sides of the border.
“This is what I’m going to suggest today, that we can demonstrate that we’re not putting the population at risk,” Lopez Obrador said in the northern city of Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Speaking before the bilateral call, which began at 4 p.m. (2100 GMT), a senior U.S. official said Washington would send more vaccines to Mexico, potentially from multiple manufacturers, including Moderna Inc and AstraZeneca.
The United States has already lent a few million vaccine doses to Mexico, and would be sharing more with it than with any other country, reflecting the importance it attached to the bilateral relationship, the official said.
The countries’ 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border has been closed to non-essential travel since early in the coronavirus pandemic last year.
(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon and Raul Cortes in Mexico City and Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Dave Graham and Peter Cooney)
Source: One America News Network
