A new single-day record for Covid-19 cases was set on Tuesday but Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell asserted that the coronavirus pandemic has been stabilizing for more than two weeks.

The federal Health Ministry reported 6,288 additional cases at Tuesday night’s coronavirus press briefing, increasing the total number of accumulated cases to 191,410.

Just over 20% of people who have tested positive for Covid-19 are health workers.

The Health Ministry also reported 793 additional Covid-19 fatalities, lifting Mexico’s official death toll to 23,377.

Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía said that 24,387 cases are considered active – an increase of 1,232 compared to Monday – and that there are 59,106 suspected cases across the country.

Mexico passed a Covid-19 testing milestone on Tuesday, with more than half a million tests now completed.

However, Mexico’s testing rate – about 3,900 people have been tested per 1 million inhabitants – is still very low compared to most countries in the region and beyond.

Health Ministry data shows that just over 60,000 coronavirus patients have been hospitalized since the start of the pandemic, a figure that accounts for almost one in every three people who have tested positive.

Of that number, 5,402 patients – about one in 12 – were placed on ventilators. Almost 70% of patients who were intubated ended up dying.

More than 130,000 people who tested positive for Covid-19 were not hospitalized, of whom 2,471 died in their homes.

Mexico City leads the country for Covid-19 deaths, with 5,656 fatalities as of Tuesday, according to official data. México state has the second highest death toll, with 3,515 fatalities, followed by Baja California, Veracruz and Sinaloa.

In addition to the 23,377 confirmed Covid-19 deaths, 1,848 fatalities are suspected of having been caused by the disease.

Mexico City also leads the country for accumulated and active coronavirus cases, with 43,596 of the former and 3,906 of the latter. Neighboring México state ranks second in both categories, having recorded a total of 30,011 cases of which 2,343 are considered active.

Six other states have more than 1,000 active cases: Puebla, Guanajuato, Tabasco, Veracruz, Tamaulipas and Jalisco.

At the municipal level, Puebla city has the most active cases followed by León, Guanajuato, and Iztapalapa, Mexico City.

In the first 23 days of June, the Health Ministry reported a total of 100,746 additional Covid-19 cases, a figure that equates to 53% of the total number of cases detected in Mexico throughout the pandemic. Health officials reported 13,447 deaths, 58% of the total, in the same period.

An average of 4,380 new cases and 585 deaths were reported every day between June 1 and June 23, a period which coincides with the first three weeks of the so-called new normal during which some coronavirus restrictions have been eased.

But while the statistics are alarming, Deputy Health Minister López-Gatell highlighted that the rate of growth in case numbers has slowed in percentage terms this month.

Speaking at the presidential press conference on Tuesday, the government’s coronavirus point man said that starting “about 16 days ago, we’ve had increases [in case numbers] in percentage terms that are smaller” than those recorded perviously.

López-Gatell acknowledged that the percentage increases are in comparison with an increasingly higher number of total cases and that about 5,000 cases per day were reported in the period but stressed that “the day to day change in terms of percentage increases is decreasing in speed.”

That is “positive news,” he said before adding: “Of course, it’s still not satisfactory while this number of deaths are occurring every day.”

Source: El Universal (sp), Milenio (sp)