The federal government’s coronavirus case numbers – 1,378 confirmed cases as of Wednesday – are not credible, according to two epidemiological experts who spoke with the newspaper El Financiero.

Alheli Calderón, a medical researcher at the College of the Northern Border, said that it is not plausible that Mexico’s northern border states have so many fewer cases of Covid-19 than the states they adjoin in the U.S.

California, for example, had around 10,000 confirmed cases as of Thursday morning but Baja California had just 37. Arizona had more than 1,400 cases whereas Sonora only had 18, while Texas and New Mexico had more than 4,500 confirmed cases between them as of Thursday morning but the four Mexican states they border – Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas – only had a combined total of 155 cases.

“The Covid-19 infection figures in Mexico are not reliable. I would trust the [number of] deaths more, it’s a more accurate number,” Calderón said.

“We shouldn’t pay too much attention to the number of confirmed cases because the Health Ministry has said that it only has 9,100 tests scheduled [almost 12,300 tests have now been performed] in the first stage,” she said, adding that more than half a million Covid-19 tests have been carried out in the United States.

Calderón also pointed out that the number of tests completed in Mexico is much lower than countries such as South Korea, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Malaquías López, an epidemiologist and professor of medicine at the National Autonomous University, agreed that the government’s Covid-19 case numbers are not a reliable indication of the presence of the disease in Mexico. He claimed that health authorities are only allowing people with severe symptoms of Covid-19 to get tested for the disease.

“There is a deliberate concealment of cases,” López said, adding that the only accurate number that will be known in Mexico at the end of the Covid-19 pandemic is that for coronavirus-related deaths.

Source: El Financiero (sp)