New coronavirus case numbers are on the rise in seven states, a senior Health Ministry official said Wednesday as total cases across Mexico passed 450,000.

Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía told the nightly coronavirus press briefing that the epidemics in Baja California Sur, Colima, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Nayarit, Yucatán and Zacatecas are still in a growth phase.

He noted that Baja California Sur’s Covid-19 positivity rate  – the percentage of tests that come back positive – has increased to 50% in recent weeks from about 35% previously.

A higher positivity rate is an indication of wider spread of the virus in the community. Baja California Sur currently has an estimated 1,098 active cases, a figure that accounts for 21% of total estimated cases.

At the national level, only 9% of total cases are estimated to be active.

Alomía said that case numbers have recently spiked 7% in Colima, noting that the total number of estimated cases in the small Pacific coast state is 2,224.

Just over 20% of confirmed cases in Colima – 453 – are estimated to be active.

In Guanajuato, Salamanca, Silao and León are among the municipalities where case numbers are on the rise, Alomía said.

León, the state’s largest city, currently has the third largest active outbreak in Mexico, with 997 cases.

Only Mérida, Yucatán, and Centro (Villahermosa), Tabasco, currently have more active cases, according to federal data.

In Hidalgo, 871 of 7,628 cases, or 11%, are estimated to be active, 2% higher than the national percentage, while 13% of cases are estimated to be active in Nayarit.

More than half of Nayarit’s 3,677 confirmed cases were detected in Tepic, the state capital.

Yucatán currently has 1,907 active cases, with the highest numbers in Mérida and Valladolid. The active case numbers account for 17% of total estimated cases in the state.

In Zacatecas, 664 of 3,188 estimated cases are active, meaning that 21% of total cases were diagnosed among people who first developed coronavirus symptoms in the past 14 days. Zacatecas, Guadalupe and Fresnillo are among the municipalities where new case numbers are on the rise.

Mexico’s overall case tally rose to 456,100 on Wednesday with 6,139 new cases registered by health authorities. The official Covid-19 death toll increased to 49,698 with 829 additional fatalities registered.

Based on confirmed cases and deaths, Mexico’s fatality rate is currently 10.9, well above the global rate of 3.8.

Mexico has recorded 39.4 Covid-19 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, the 13th highest rate in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

With coronavirus case numbers and deaths continuing to show steady growth, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell renewed his call for people to wear face masks, especially in enclosed spaces.

“If they are used in a massive way, we will be able to interfere with the release of the virus from the respiratory tract of the nose and mouth of those people who with symptoms or without symptoms … could be spreading the virus.”

Source: Reforma (sp)