Mexico cannot rely on Biden for vaccines as AstraZeneca supplies start

The first virtual meeting between Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and U.S. President Joe Biden has yielded a declaration including commitments for cooperating on migration, tackling the pandemic and climate change. 

The cooperation on tackling the pandemic has not included a U.S. commitment to supplying vaccines to Mexico in the short term. The Biden administration's "focus is on ensuring that every American is vaccinated," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a briefing ahead of the presidents' meeting. Psaki added, "[O]nce we accomplish that objective, we're happy to discuss further steps beyond that."

That will leave Mexico dependent on its own purchases as well as supplies via the Covax program run by the World Health Organization and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Historically, Mexico has relied on the U.S. for just 10.0% of its imports of all vaccine types in 2020, with supplies from Europe leading the way with 60.0%, Panjiva's data shows. There was a 38.0% year-over-year drop in shipments in the fourth quarter of 2020, however, perhaps reflecting healthcare spending being redirected to other requirements.

So far, Panjiva's data shows Mexico has received two deliveries of the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine and is scheduled to receive 5.2 million doses under the Covax program. Further receipts will depend on other governments' willingness to allow exports to continue unhindered, particularly with regards to the EU, as flagged in Panjiva's Feb. 1 research. Mexican imports of vaccines more broadly are led by Sanofi, which represented 49.3% of imports in 2020, followed by Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd. at 23.5% and Pfizer Inc. at 10.7%.

Christopher Rogers is a senior researcher at Panjiva, which is a business line of S&P Global Market Intelligence, a division of S&P Global Inc. This content does not constitute investment advice, and the views and opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of S&P Global Market Intelligence. Links are current at the time of publication. S&P Global Market Intelligence is not responsible if those links are unavailable later.