CAMPECHE, Mexico – In recent weeks, thousands of public school teachers have lined up outside schools and hospitals in the southern state as naval helicopters buzzed overhead carrying a precious transport sent exclusively for them by the Mexican president: vaccines Covid-19.
The government’s own guidelines call for hospital workers and elderly people in Mexican cities to be received. But teachers in rural Mexico are a key bloc.
Critics of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador say vaccinating teachers in front of all doctors is the latest evidence of how the left-wing president is playing vaccination policy in a country with the third-highest official Covid-19 death in the world. of 180,000. And instead of having state health personnel to lead the effort, according to the usual protocol, Mr. López Obrador’s administration uses officials from its social arm, “Servants of the Nation,” recognized by the news they carry with Mexico’s national emblem.
Campeche is one of several key states holding midterm elections in June. Polls show that Mr López Obrador’s Morena party has a chance to eliminate the former ruling PRI, which has led Campeche since the late 1920s. While many countries have made teachers a priority for vaccination programs during the pandemic. coronavirus, they are not usually ahead of health care workers.
In hospitals, health workers were furious that the government was inoculating teachers, while almost half of state doctors and nurses were still waiting.