Mexico City, Sep 15 (EFE) The Mexican government is negotiating with two European pharmaceutical laboratories for faster delivery of a large shipment of swine flu vaccine, Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova has said.
The government is already “in those negotiations with the expectation that we could (receive) at least a part of the vaccine by the end of the month of October”, he told MVS Radio.
At the beginning of the month, Cordova announced that 30 million doses of the vaccine would be available to protect the country’s “high risk” population from contracting swine flu.
The flu has taken the lives of 211 people and infected 23,774 others in Mexico, according to figures released Sep 10.
The first group to receive the vaccine will be health personnel and people who work with newborns.
Mexico is currently experiencing a resurgence in swine flu cases in some parts of the country, coinciding with the approach of autumn, and Cordova said that by the end of the year there could be one million people nationwide showing symptoms of the disease.
Authorities had to close until Thursday around 1,600 schools in Culiacan, capital of the northwestern state of Sinaloa, and more cases have been reported in the states of Baja California Sur and Sonora.
However, Cordova insisted that these are “moderate cases”.
