A report on Covid-19 published today by the World Health Organization placed Mexico in the ‘red’ zone and phase 2 of the pandemic, meaning cases of community transmission have been documented.
Today, Mexico registers 316 confirmed cases, 793 suspects and 1,667 negatives, however, Ricardo Cortés, director of Health Promotion, assured that the country is still in transition between phase one and phase two, despite Mexico having community transmission in which the government has been slow to report.
“We began to find, we want to announce it early, since the proportion is very small, there are some cases in which there is no identifiable history of importation, that is, in the epidemiological study of the case when the patient is questioned, ask, do you remember, if you traveled, if you received a visitor who came from abroad, particularly from high transmission countries, and already in five of these 367, which represents 1 percent, we are already starting to find that there are people who are not able to identify or recognize who infected them,” he explained at a press conference.
“We are still in transition. The transition from Stage One to Stage Two can take many days. We are about to reach the turning point in which the number of cases would increase more exponentially. We can define that we are in the transition stage between scenario one and scenario two ”, he pointed out.
When asked about the WHO placing Mexico on the list of countries with local transmission, López-Gatell said that the Organization does not use Mexico’s classification to identify the three stages of a pandemic.
Mexico’s government has been criticized for its response to COVID-19 where states have taken the lead in the fight against the pandemic while Mexico’s president continues to encourage citizens to go out, visit restaurants, and take vacations to keep the economy moving.
