López Obrador declines to get COVID-19 shot, at least for now

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Monday he won’t get a COVID-19 vaccination because his doctors told him he still has a high level of antibodies from when he was infected with the coronavirus in January.

“I have sufficient levels of antibodies, and right now it isn’t indispensable for me to get vaccinated for now,” López Obrador said.

López Obrador would have received a shot of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine last week, based on his address in a borough in the city’s center, where he lives in an apartment at the National Palace.

The president had repeatedly said he would wait his turn to get vaccinated and didn’t want it to become a “spectacle.”

In late March, López Obrador had said he would be vaccinated when people over 60 in Mexico City’s central boroughs got their first shots.

But he said a second group of doctors whom he consulted told him it wasn’t necessary, though he did not rule out getting a dose in June, when many older Mexicans would be receiving their second shot.

World & Nation

With Mexico’s vaccination program lagging, wealthy Mexicans are flocking to the U.S.

Mexico’s vaccine rollout has been painfully slow. Only 4% of Mexicans have gotten at least one dose. Those with the means seek COVID shots in U.S.

March 31, 2021

So far, Mexico has received 14.7 million doses of several brands of vaccines and administered almost 9 million so far. That is a small number compared with the country’s population of 126 million.

The 67-year-old López Obrador was criticized early in the pandemic for not conveying the gravity of the situation. He has consistently refused to push for more of the drastic lockdowns seen in other countries, calling such tactics “authoritarian.”

The country has tallied more than 204,000 test-confirmed COVID-19 deaths, although the government puts the real toll at almost 324,000.