Russia’s coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V approved for use in Mexico

 health ministry signed a contract Monday for 400,000 doses of Sputnik V that will arrive this month. That is still a tiny amount for Mexico”s 126 million people

Mexico approved the Russian coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V for use Tuesday, just hours after the publication of early results of an advanced study saying it is about 91 per cent effective. Assistant Health Secretary Hugo Lpez-Gatell, the government’s pandemic spokesman, said the health ministry signed a contract Monday for 400,000 doses of Sputnik V that will arrive this month. That is still a tiny amount for Mexico’s 126 million people.

It couldn’t come a moment too soon. Mexico has been hit so hard that hospitals in the capital were 87% full, and ambulance drivers waited hours to find an open bed for patients. Mexico has reported about 159,500 test-confirmed deaths related to COVID-19, but excess-death estimates place the real toll at well over 195,000. Unfortunately, because of the saturation of the hospitals and the phone lines, we are waiting about three or four hours before they can assign us a hospital, and to get there, said ambulance crew chief Eduardo Vigueras.

Vigueras noted patients are sometimes sent to the only available beds at hospitals, far away from the overwhelmed east side borough of Iztapalapa. He said some relatives get angry and aggressive with paramedics because of the delays in treatment. Because some patients are in such bad shape, some families make an even harder choice. Paramedics say they often go to pick up a seriously ill coronavirus patient only to find their loved ones want to cancel the emergency call, because they know treatment is in such short supply and they may never see their relative again…