The third wave of the coronavirus pandemic has been receding for eight weeks, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Tuesday.

But data from the Reuters COVID-19 tracker paints a slightly different picture, although it also shows that the delta-driven wave is on the wane.

The Reuters data shows that the average number of new infections reported each day has fallen by more than 7,500 over the past three weeks to 8,143. The latter figure represents just 43% of the rolling seven-day peak recorded on August 17, but that was just five weeks ago, suggesting that the pandemic might not have been declining for as long as López-Gatell claims.

However, the government has long stressed that the case numbers reported on a daily basis are not necessarily indicative of infections detected that day. Some may have been detected weeks or even months earlier, health officials have said.

Speaking at President López Obrador’s regular news conference, the government’s pandemic chief also said that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients is declining.

“We’re continuing to see this trend of the vacation of [beds in] COVID hospitals,” López-Gatell said. “… This is a maintained trend in the entire national territory.”

Federal data shows that there are just under 9,000 hospitalized COVID patients across the country. Durango has the highest occupancy rate for general care hospital beds – currently just under 58% – while 51% of beds with ventilators are taken in Tabasco, more than in any other state.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s accumulated case tally rose to 3.58 million on Tuesday with 12,521 new infections reported.

The official COVID-19 death toll increased by 815 to 272,580, and there are 64,175 estimated active cases across the country, a 6% increase compared to Monday.

Almost 96.1 million vaccine doses have been administered in Mexico, according to the latest official data, after just over 442,000 were given Monday.

“The epidemic is declining and vaccination is not stopping,” López-Gatell wrote on Twitter.

About 70% of Mexican adults have received at least one shot, while the population wide vaccination rate is 49%, according to The New York Times vaccinations tracker. About one-third of Mexico’s 126 million citizens are fully vaccinated.

Mexico News Daily