The Jakarta Post

Please Update your browser

Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.

Mexico cheers US border opening, frets over WHO vaccine rules

(Reuters) (The Jakarta Post)

Premium

Mexico City

Fri, October 15, 2021 Published on Oct. 14, 2021 Published on 2021-10-14T20:48:09+07:00

Set as preferred source

M

exico's president on Wednesday hailed a United States decision to open their shared border in November after more than 18 months of pandemic restrictions, though millions of Mexicans inoculated with Chinese and Russian vaccines face being shut out.

The world's busiest land border, where nearly a million people crossed each day before the coronavirus pandemic broke out, has been closed to non-essential travel since March 2020.

"The opening of the northern border has been achieved, we are going to have normality," President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told his daily morning news conference.

Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard added the US would determine the exact date, but that it would be in early November.

With the United States planning to permit entry only to visitors inoculated with vaccines authorized by the World Health Organization (WHO), Lopez Obrador urged WHO to approve all other COVID-19 vaccines in public use.

"The WHO must act correctly, without political or ideological tendencies, sticking to the science," Lopez Obrador said, in reference to slower certification for Russian and some Chinese vaccines.

The closure of the 1,954-mile (3,144-kilometer) border dealt a blow to businesses on both side of the frontier.