Fabiola Martinez and Roberto Garduno
Newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, January 19, 2022, p. 5
The two specific drugs for the treatment of covid patients (Merck’s Molnupiravir and Pfizer’s Paxlovid) will not be sold in pharmacies, but will be distributed by the government, as happened with the vaccines.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told the press that the purchase agreement with the producing laboratories is in progress and in the next few days the medicines will already be available in Mexico.
As for what will happen to patients treated in private hospitals, the undersecretary for Prevention and Health Promotion, Hugo López-Gatell, explained that a mechanism is being sought in which the private sector has an outlet through use in the public sector and of course free
, as occurred with remdesivir.
At the moment they have a feature that is emergency use authorization and that is a limited authorization, it cannot be done for commercial purposes, but it is done in the context of an emergency
, as occurs with vaccines, against which the Mexican State protects their correct use, he pointed out.
The president and the undersecretary were careful not to disclose the cost of Molnupiravir and Paxlovid, due to the negotiation with the pharmaceutical companies, although resources were guaranteed for that purpose.
What they did emphasize was that the new drugs are not for treating covid in people with mild symptoms, but rather for patients at risk of complications.
They will be given only in specific medical centers because their use is not recommended, for example, in pregnant women or people with kidney disease.
In the weekly health report, it was specified that recent cases of covid add up to 10 times more than hospitalizations and deaths, based on which the rapid spread of the omicron variant is confirmed, but mostly with mild symptoms.
López-Gatell also said that there is strong data that schools they are not particularly centers of contagion
; On the contrary, the current outbreak began during the holiday period, and the percentage of cases in children and adolescents has remained stable throughout the pandemic.
Currently there are 187 thousand 832 campuses with face-to-face classes; likewise, 18.4 million students and 1.7 million teachers, said the Secretary of Education, Delfina Gómez.
From the morning conference links were made for additional vaccination to educational personnel in Veracruz, Aguascalientes, Querétaro and Quintana Roo. On a national scale, 1.4 million reinforcements have been applied and this protection has been completed in 22 entities.
From the reinforcement in the country, it was reported that 55 percent of the initial target groups (older adults, health personnel) are already protected and progress is being made with adolescents.
For the additional dose in the population between 40 and 59 years of age, the period from the application of the second dose of the original schedule was shortened from six to five months.
As for other health campaigns, the course of the material dissemination plan focused on dissuading addictions from the use of chemical substances in rural areas was detailed.
