Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Tuesday, March 2. I'm Nailibut. Here's what

you need to know today. Why Americans are feeling more hopeful? Plus, how people with disabilities

could go to space. But first, today's one big thing. Latin America turns to Russia and China

to get vaccinated.

Yesterday, President Joe Biden had his first virtual meeting with Mexican President

Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador. And they talked about a lot of things. But what we want

to focus on was actually the coronavirus vaccine part of their conversation. And our world

editor, Dave Lawler, is here. Dave, why was this a really important part of the conversation

yesterday? So Mexico, like a lot of countries around the world, is struggling to roll out

vaccines. And so they're looking north at the United States. Lopez Obrador was expected

to ask in the meeting whether the US would consider sharing doses of vaccines with Mexico.

The answer from the White House was no. The focus for now is on making sure that Americans

have access to vaccines after which time the focus will shift to the rest of the world,

including, of course, the US neighbors Mexico and Canada. Dave, how are other countries

in the Americas handling this? Right. So a few countries are doing relatively well.

Chile, Barbados have both been able to get quite a few vaccines. But they're the exceptions.

Most countries are really struggling. And they've had to look at Russia and China. And in

some cases, India to provide vaccines because they just haven't been able to get the kinds

of doses that we in the United States are now rolling out.

How many of those that are making their way to the Americas?

So at least 10 countries have signed up to receive both Russian vaccines and Chinese

vaccines, 10 countries for each of those. The shipments are often quite small actually

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