Former incumbents of the Federal Secretariat of Health in Mexico affirmed that the data that the current federal administration gives regarding the health emergency due to COVID-19 “are not credible” and do not inform the reality that the health sector faces with respect to cases of contagion.
In the virtual forum “The moment of the epidemic: trends and decisions on critical days”, specialists such as Julio Frenk Mora, Secretary of Health with Vicente Fox; and José Narro Robles, branch secretary with Enrique Peña, criticized the official government data of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Frenk Mora warned that “all information that is provided to citizens in health matters must be clear, consistent and credible, and these elements, have been lacking in matters of communication from the federal government. “
He accused that the statements made by the Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez, in the nightly conferences of the daily report on the coronavirus “are very confusing” because they use foreign concepts that are difficult to communicate to the general public. “The undersecretary’s statements are very confusing, it introduces very confusing concepts for the population. If it is not consistent, the result, in the end, is a loss of credibility, and that is not convenient,” he said.
Narro Robles pointed out that “this lack of credibility in the figures and missteps when carrying out statistical operations” led to questions and claims from some sectors of society, who demanded that they report in detail because of the importance of the subject.
“I clearly understand when one makes a table that does not start at zero, when statistics are made to provide information to the health sector, but this is not a matter of how to make the curve look prettier, it is a matter of seeing what is shaping in reality. “
“Pablo Kuri (who also participated in the forum) knows very well that the Sentinel Model has been an extraordinary tool for having information about influenza, but when we are facing new pathologies it becomes very difficult to use,” he said.
Frenk Mora added that “if the curve flattened”, as the federal government reported, that was achieved “thanks to the actions of society”, and it will be up to them to configure a social and economic rescue plan at the end of the pandemic .
The forum was organized by Pensando México, a platform for dialogue with specialists led by Salomón Chertorivski, and the general secretary of Movimiento Ciudadano, Jorge Álvarez Máynez; and federal deputy Martha Tagle.
