More than 20,000 new coronavirus cases were added to Mexico’s accumulated tally for a second consecutive day on Thursday, while the official COVID-19 death toll rose by 835.
The Health Ministry reported 20,633 new infections, raising the country’s pandemic total to just over 3.29 million.
The additional fatalities lifted the death toll to 256,287, a figure that is almost certainly a vast undercount given that there were almost half a million excess deaths between January 2020 and March 2021.
There are 132,418 active cases across Mexico, a 2.5% increase compared to Wednesday. On a per capita basis, Colima has the highest number of active cases with almost 400 per 100,000 people, the Health Ministry reported. Mexico City ranks second followed by Tabasco, San Luis Potosí and Nayarit.
Four states have fewer than 50 active cases per 100,000 people. They are Chihuahua, Chiapas, Baja California and Morelos.
In other COVID-19 news:
• Almost 82.7 million vaccine doses have been administered in Mexico, according to the most recent Health Ministry data, after just over 755,000 were given Wednesday. About 63% of the eligible population – people aged 18 and over – has received at least one shot.
• Tamaulipas recorded its worst day of the pandemic in terms of new case numbers on Wednesday. Authorities in the northern border state reported 740 new infections, 23 more than the previous record set a week ago.
Reynosa recorded the highest number of new cases with 145 followed by Matamoros (114); Tampico (96); Ciudad Madero (89); and Ciudad Victoria (65).
Tamaulipas also recorded 10 additional COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday. The state’s official death toll is currently 5,824, according to state data, while the accumulated case tally is 75,509.
• A Pan American Health Organization Official said Thursday that Mexican authorities should seek to identify members of the community with worrying symptoms of COVID-19 and get them to hospital before it’s too late.
“… Identifying those who present symptoms of alert and taking them to a COVID unit can save lives, more so than just waiting in hospitals for them to arrive in very deteriorated conditions,” Cristian Morales said.
He noted that the third wave of the pandemic is hitting Mexico hard and that almost 1,000 people have died per day recently. The high death toll has occurred, Morales said, even though the federal government significantly increased the capacity of public hospitals to treat COVID patients.
• The Colima Health Ministry reported Wednesday that it had detected the state’s first confirmed case of the lambda strain of the coronavirus. The variant was first identified in Peru, which easily has the highest per capita COVID-19 death rate in the world with 609 fatalities per 100,000 people. Scientists have warned that the strain could be even more contagious than delta but that hasn’t been confirmed.
The World Health Organization lists lamda as a “variant of interest” whereas the alpha, beta, gamma and delta strains are “variants of concern.”
• The Uruapan General Hospital reported Tuesday that its COVID ward was full.
There are more than 1,000 active cases in the Michoacán municipality, where the risk of infection is maximum risk red, according to local authorities.
According to federal data, the occupancy rate for general care beds in COVID wards is 100% at 120 hospitals across the country.
Among the hospitals at capacity are facilities located in Mexico City; Pátzcuaro, Michoacán; La Paz, Baja California Sur; Mazatlán, Sinaloa; Toluca, México state; and Tehuacán, Puebla.
With reports from Reforma, El Financiero, Milenio,
