Mexico’s coronavirus case tally surged past 200,000 on Thursday with more than 6,000 new cases reported while the Covid-19 death toll exceeded 25,000.
The federal Health Ministry reported that the accumulated number of confirmed cases since the beginning of the pandemic had increased to 202,951 with 6,104 new cases registered on Thursday.
It was only the second time that more than 6,000 cases were registered on a single day after 6,288 were reported two days prior.
Mexico now has the 11th highest coronavirus case tally in the world, according to data compiled by the Johns Hopkins University, having passed France on Thursday.
The Health Ministry reported that the official Covid-19 death toll had increased to 25,060 with 737 additional fatalities. An additional 1,966 deaths are suspected of having been caused by Covid-19 but have not yet been confirmed.
Today marks 100 days since the first Covid-19 death was reported on March 18 when Mexico had recorded just 118 confirmed cases.
Three weeks ago, when Mexico’s coronavirus death toll was about half its current figure, Deputy Health Minister predicted that a total of 35,000 people would lose their lives to Covid-19, or 60,000 in a worst case scenario.
If the average number of deaths reported each day thus far in June continues, the death toll will pass the former figure in the second week of July.
Of the more than 200,000 confirmed cases, 25,529 are considered active, an increase of 1,493 cases compared to Wednesday.
Health Ministry Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía said that there are also 63,583 suspected cases of Covid-19 and that 528,651 people have now been tested.
Among those who recently tested positive is federal Finance Minister Arturo Herrera, who announced the news on Twitter yesterday afternoon.
“I have just been told that I tested positive for Covid-19. I have very minor symptoms. From this moment I will be in quarantine, and will continue working from home,” he wrote.
Herrera is the fourth high-ranking federal official to have tested positive after Public Administration Minister Irma Sandoval, Consumer Protection Agency chief Ricardo Sheffield and Mexican Social Security Institute director Zoé Robledo.
The Finance Ministry said that contact tracing would be conducted to identify people who recently came into contact with the minister. One of those is President López Obrador, who met with Herrera in the National Palace in Mexico City on Monday.
The capital remains the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, with 3,842 active cases, according to official data. Mexico City has recorded more than 45,000 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic and its Covid-19 death toll passed 6,000 on Thursday.
México state ranks second for accumulated cases and deaths, with 32,017 of the former and 3,873 of the latter. It also has the second largest active outbreak in the country, with 2,804 cases.
Puebla, Guanajuato, Veracruz, Tabasco and Tamaulipas all have more than 1,000 active cases, while Baja California, Veracruz, Sinaloa and Puebla have each recorded more than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths.
Almost four months after the first case of Covid-19 was detected in Mexico, the country is in the midst of a deadly pandemic with no clear end in sight.
In the middle of April, López-Gatell presented an epidemiological model that predicted that the coronavirus epidemic in the Valley of México metropolitan area would be virtually over by June 25 with 95% of cases having been recorded.
At Thursday night’s coronavirus press briefing, the deputy minister charged that some media outlets had misinterpreted the prediction because they reported that he had said that Mexico’s pandemic would be over by that date.
“We don’t assume that the journalists or their editors … or the media owners … have ill will. We assume that there is a misinterpretation of the information,” López-Gatell said.
He presented a video showing clips of various press conferences since February at which he asserted that the coronavirus epidemic in Mexico would be long.
On April 16, the date on which it was forecast that the Valley of México epidemic would be virtually over, López-Gatell qualified the prediction by saying that the outbreak would only come to an end if people followed the coronavirus mitigation restrictions.
He acknowledged last night that the mitigation measures are “tiring, uncomfortable, disagreeable” and cause anxiety but reiterated their importance and called on people to be patient.
Fifteen of Mexico’s 32 states still face “red light” restrictions because the risk of coronavirus infection is deemed to be at the maximum level in those states. The other 17 states were allocated an “orange light” on the Health Ministry’s “stoplight” map that will remain in effect until Sunday.
A new map will be presented at tonight’s coronavirus press briefing, with the stoplight colors allocated to each state and corresponding restrictions to take effect on Monday.
Source: Milenio (sp), El Universal (sp), El Financiero (sp)
