The federal government announced Friday that the coronavirus stoplight map it published on June 18 would remain in effect for an additional two weeks.
Nineteen states will remain low risk green until at least July 18, eight will stay at the yellow light medium risk level and five will maintain their orange light high risk status.
In the green light category are Aguascalientes, Baja California, Chiapas, Coahuila, Durango, México state, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Michoacán, Morelos, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Puebla, Querétaro, San Luis PotosÃ, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas.
The yellow light states are Campeche, Chihuahua, Colima, Mexico City, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, Sonora and Veracruz, while the orange light entities are Baja California Sur, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Tamaulipas and Yucatán.
Although the lights didn’t change, two states recorded new records.
Two of the orange light states – Quintana Roo and Yucatán – recorded new daily records for coronavirus cases this week, with more than 400 confirmed in the former state on Thursday and over 300 in the latter on Friday. The highly infectious Delta strain of the virus is circulating in both Quintana Roo and Yucatán as well as many other Mexico states, according to health authorities.
Nationwide, the federal Health Ministry reported 5,879 new cases on Friday and 177 additional Covid-19 deaths, pushing the accumulated tally to 2.53 million infections and 233,425 fatalities. New case numbers have trended upwards recently, raising fears that Mexico is in or entering a third wave of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, updated Health Ministry excess mortality data shows that more than 447,000 fatalities are attributable to Covid-19, an increase of almost 130,000 compared to data published in March. The figure is almost double the official death toll.
An analysis published in May by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington School of Medicine showed that more than 617,000 people had likely died from Covid in Mexico.
Reported Covid-19 deaths had decreased every month since February after almost 33,000 were recorded in January – the worst month of the pandemic – but spiked 42.3% in June to 9,479 from 6,661 in May.
The increase occurred despite all seniors already having been given the chance to be vaccinated and the vaccine rollout extending to people in their 40s and 30s last Month.
Just under 32 million people have received at least one shot of a vaccine, of whom 19.7 million are fully vaccinated, according to the most recent Health Ministry data. The former figure represents 38% of the adult population but it doesn’t include Mexicans who have traveled to the United States to get vaccinated.
According to The New York Times vaccinations tracker, Mexico ranks 72nd out of 182 countries listed for doses administered per 100 people. Mexico has given 36 shots per 100, the tracker shows, and 25% of the entire population – adults and children – has received at least one dose.
With reports from Milenio
