Business owners believe Mexico will achieve herd immunity only by July 2022

The private sector has a more conservative prognosis than the federal government on herd immunity in Mexico, as they believe it will still take another year until it is achieved. This is a crucial scenario for the recovery of the economy.

According to the Center for Private Sector Studies (CEESP) - CCE consultants-, although the vaccination plan has had "important" improvements, they consider that it is not "effective enough", considering that only 15.4 million people are currently fully vaccinated and 11.3 have had one dose of the vaccine. With vaccination moving at that pace, they warned that herd immunity in the country will only be reached by July 2022.

Thus, projections from the business sector differ in at least three months from the views of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP). Earlier in the month, Undersecretary Gabriel Yorio estimated that, by the first quarter of 2022, the entire Mexican population under 15 years of age could be vaccinated. "This is going to change the economic dynamics," he said.

The comment came after a month in which the country had reached record vaccination numbers. In May, the Ministry of Health reported that more than one million people had been vaccinated. However, by June, the pace slowed down and reached a maximum of 600 thousand people. According to President López Obrador, this happened due to a lower availability of doses, but he assured that Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard is working on that.

This scenario is vital for the recovery of the country's economy, which remains a challenge for the government, in the opinion of this private sector think tank. In their analysis, they emphasize that, although Inegi estimates for May an annual growth of 24.8%, this is still a result of the sharp fall in the economy a year ago and therefore does not reflect a strong recovery of the economy after the crisis. If it had been compared with the month before the pandemic, economic activity is seen 0.4% lower and remains 1.3% below the closing level of 2018.

According to the Center for Private Sector Studies (CEESP) - CCE consultants-, although the vaccination plan has had "important" improvements, they consider that it is not "effective enough", considering that currently only 15.4 million people are fully vaccinated and 11.3 have had one dose of the vaccine. With vaccination moving at that pace, they warned that herd immunity in the country will only be reached by July 2022.

In addition, the behavior of poverty levels are seen on the rise, increasing strongly on pandemic and employment issues, which continues to show gaps. The Center affirms that "the impact of the health crisis has been much stronger in the lower income population, widening the income gap between rich and poor", which they consider to be related with "the absence of government support policies for people and companies affected by the pandemic".

This week, the Survey on the Monitoring of the Effects of COVID-19 on the well-being of Mexican households from the Institute of Research for Development with Equity (EQUIDE), announced that last March, 54% of the population was in a situation of poverty, 12 percentage points above its level in 2018. This means that 10.6 million more people showed signs of poverty in 2021.

According to the National Survey of Occupation and Employment (ENOE), 2.8 million people who were working in March 2020 , were still out of work in April 2021, and the percentage of employed individuals who receive up to two minimum wages went from 58.4% in the first quarter of 2020 to 61.3% in the same period this year, while the percentage of those earning more than two minimum wages fell from 25.0% to 21.5% in the same period.