Authorities in Jalisco and Aguascalientes are attempting to track down hundreds of people who could be infected with the new coronavirus Covid-19, while those in Puebla are monitoring 140 people who came into contact with three members of a family who tested positive for the disease.
Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro said on Wednesday that authorities are looking for approximately 400 people who traveled to Colorado at the start of the month.
“The most significant potential contagion front in Jalisco has to do with two charter flights that went to Denver, United States, two weeks ago,” he said in a video message posted to social media, adding that authorities are particularly interested in locating people who went to the ski town of Vail.
“It’s a group of about 400 people who traveled to this place and now several of them have coronavirus,” Alfaro said.
The governor said that some of the people who traveled on the two flights to the United States went to Tapalpa, Jalisco, and Bahía de Banderas, Nayarit, after they returned to Mexico.
“We have to take it seriously. We particularly need this group of people who were part of this trip to understand that there is a very high probability that you picked up this virus and that you are today a potential risk to the people who are close to you,” Alfaro said.
In the same video, Jalisco Health Minister Fernando Petersen Aranguren called on people who traveled on the two flights to stay at home and get in contact with health authorities.
“We don’t want this to be the beginning of a significant spread of coronavirus,” he said.
Petersen told a press conference on Wednesday that there are now 27 people in Jalisco infected with coronavirus, up from just eight in 24 hours. Ten were among the 400 people who traveled to Colorado.
In Aguascalientes, health authorities are seeking to locate all passengers who traveled to the state from Mexico City on an Aeroméxico flight on March 12. A 25-year-old man who had been studying in Spain was on the flight and tested positive for coronavirus after arrival in Aguascalientes.
Health official María Eugenia Velasco Marín said Wednesday that most passengers had been located and tested for Covid-19 but none has been confirmed to have the infectious disease.
Meanwhile, Puebla Governor Miguel Barbosa said Wednesday that the father and two children of a four-person family that recently traveled to Colorado had tested positive for Covid-19.
He said that the family had coronavirus symptoms when they returned to Mexico but didn’t alert authorities. Before the three members of the family tested positive, they interacted with other residents of the upscale La Vista residential development in Puebla city and the father went to a gym, Barbosa said.
“If they’d reported [their symptoms] to us, we would have done what is necessary to contain [the spread],” he said.
“They came from Colorado with symptoms, … they arrived [and carried on] their social lives in La Vista … and they didn’t inform us [of their symptoms]. It’s a serious mistake that we have to correct and we’ve already started,” the governor said.
The 140 people who had contact with the family are in self-isolation and are maintaining contact with health authorities in Puebla.
In social media posts, the family rejected the claim that they had symptoms of coronavirus when they returned to Mexico.
The number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 increased by 25 to 118 on Wednesday and Mexico recorded its first death linked to the disease last night.
Source: El Universal (sp), Milenio (sp), Infobae (sp), La Jornada (sp)
