Introduction

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, Mexico found itself in a similar predicament to many other countries across the planet. Its public health system was ill-prepared for what was to come (see GHS Index, 2019; Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, 2019). Against an unknown coronavirus whose global reach and magnitude were unprecedented, it confronted the daunting and urgent challenge of how to fill a series of governance gaps—informational, policy, normative, institutional, and compliance—in order to control the virus, protect its population, and manage the multiple health and non-health-related dimensions of the crisis. ¹ To make matters even worse, in their efforts to construct and bolster health security against the virus in record time, ² import-dependent countries like Mexico, with more limited human, scientific, medical, technological, and economic resource endowments, found themselves hard hit by global supply shocks brought on by a wave of national lockdowns and travel restrictions.