Earlier this morning a DHL Express Boeing 767F landed at Mexico City International Airport with the first batch of 3,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines for that country.
The Mexican government celebrated the news, highlighting that they are the first Latin American country to receive vaccines and one of the first ten in the world.
“Today is the beginning of the end of that pandemic. Today we can clearly see that we are going to defeat them, those viruses that have come to transform our lives. And that is why we say that we have hope and we are very happy today,” said Marcelo Ebrard, the Secretary of Foreign Relations of Mexico in a speech made right next to the plane.
The initial agreement of the Mexican government with Pfizer / BioNtech covers more than 34 million doses, of which 1.4 million will arrive until the end of January 2021. For this, Ebrard explained, an airlift has been established from Belgium through DHL, initial shipment point for vaccines. The company will also carry out distribution within Mexican territory. In total, Mexico expects to buy some 200 million doses.
Descarga de vacunas dese el aeropuerto pic.twitter.com/t5z6HNnJzy
— Marcelo Ebrard C. (@m_ebrard) December 23, 2020
“At DHL, we take seriously, and with the utmost dedication and enthusiasm the responsibility that has been given to us,” said Ing. Antonio Arranz, president of DHL Mexico.
“It has been a long period of preparation but we are ready. This task represents one of the greatest logistical challenges that the company has faced in its fifty years of history. Only in Mexico DHL Express will have its more than 9 thousand employees available for this operation, 4,300 vehicles, 10 international flights and 16 daily domestic flights “, he concluded.
