A week before the end of the Santa Distancia Day in Mexico, the federal government’s containment measures issued during the pandemic, the number of infections and deaths continue to rise.
Analysts have documented that initial federal government projections, stating that an estimated 6,000 people would die during the pandemic, a number already surpassed and the end of the pandemic is nowhere in sight.
Just days before the government issued stay at home orders and closed much of the economy in the country, the President posted a video on social media encouraging people not to stay home, go on vacation, and visit restaurants because the pandemic had been avoided in Mexico.
Known cases of coronavirus in Mexico were still unrestrained on Sunday, according to data published by health authorities, which put the infections at 68,620, 2,764 more than the day before.
The number of new deaths was 215, for a cumulative of 7,394, at a time when the country is reopening the sectors it considers essential to its economy and given the gradual return to the “new normal” on June 1, a reopening of many industries worldwide that will be governed by a traffic light system.
Mexico’s Undersecretary of Health has continued to report that the country has been successful in flattening the curve, although there hasn’t been any flattening documented, even with Mexico’s underwhelming approach to COVID-19 testing, with Mexico being one of the countries with the least tests processed worldwide.
Mexico has maintained the position that knowing the amount of infected people in the country isn’t important to fighting the pandemic. While there is no treatment options that would change with a positive test result, testing and contact tracing has been proven to quarantine people who have been in contact with a known case to prevent further spread, which is the importance of testing on a large scale.
On May 1, President López Obrador was pleased at a news conference that Dr. López-Gatell, Undersecretary of Health, had told him that ‘the peak’ of the pandemic would be on May 6, which by the numbers, has turned out to be an extremely low point of the pandemic with recent days tripling the number of new cases recorded on May 6, the alleged peak of the virus in Mexico.
Hugo López-Gatell has recognized that the number of infections and deaths related to the new virus were underestimated in Mexico, which is among the top 10 countries with the most deaths in the world. He has also conceded that there really isn’t any clear ‘peak’ that can be predicted at this time, however many Mexicans followed the Secretaries signs given every day that the country has won the battle against the coronavirus.
What is observed is a relaxation in the confinement measures associated with the perception that we are already getting out of the most complicated situation of the pandemic, and with this, Mexico has set new records four out of the last 6 days, as the government is already communicating victory over the pandemic.
According to WHO, Latin America and the Caribbean have become the “new epicenter” of the coronavirus pandemic, exceeding 40,000 deaths from COVID-19 on Sunday, according to an AFP count based on official data.
The economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic will leave 11.5 million new unemployed in Latin America this year, which will increase the total number of unemployed to 37.7 million people, ECLAC and ILO estimated on Thursday.
The Secretary of Security in Mexico has warned that unemployment will stoke insecurity in the country with an increase in crime.
Manuel Espino Barrientos, commissioner of the Federal Protection Service (SPF), mentioned that the country could go through a “very rough stage of insecurity”, once everything is normalized. “It is a common sense estimate that has to be taken into account,” he commented.
In March, Mexico was ranked among the nations where its population feels most insecure and where it earns the least compared to the member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
In the study, How is life in 2020?, Measuring social welfare, the country ranks as the second nation where most homicides are committed, after Colombia, but it occupies the first position where people feel more insecure.
The head of the SPF trusted that the decisions that have been taken will give results in the short term, although it is a quotient that it will not be easy for them to evaluate the advances made by the health contingency.
A week before the end of the Santa Distancia Day in Mexico, the federal government's containment measures issued during the pandemic, the number . . .
