The pandemic continues to wane in Mexico City, the country’s coronavirus epicenter since COVID-19 was first detected here in early 2020.

The city government’s coronavirus spokesman said Friday that the number of active cases had fallen to a “historic minimum” of slightly less than 4,000.

Eduardo Clark was referring to the lowest number of active cases since the end of the pandemic’s first wave last year.

Federal data shows there are just 3,208 active cases in the capital, which has recorded almost 1 million confirmed infections since the start of the pandemic and more than 52,000 COVID-19 deaths, far more in both categories than any other state.

Clark also said that the number of COVID patients in Mexico City hospitals had fallen to 514 from 682 two weeks ago.

“We’re already 60 below the previous minimum that we experienced on July 13 of the present year,” he said.

Clark said that 290 additional patients were admitted to hospitals in the capital over the past week, but he didn’t disclose how many were discharged or died.

He also said that Mexico City will remain low risk green on the federal government stoplight map for at least the next two weeks. The capital switched to green four weeks ago and is currently one of 29 states deemed low risk.

The federal Health Ministry uses 10 indicators to determine the stoplight color in each state, including hospital occupancy levels, the effective reproduction rate (how many people each infected person infects), the weekly positivity rate (the percentage of COVID-19 tests that come back positive) and estimated case numbers per 100,000 inhabitants.

Clark said that the capital’s score is currently the lowest it has been since the stoplight system was introduced in June of 2020.

In other COVID-19 news:

• The Health Ministry reported 3,493 new cases and 256 additional COVID-19 deaths on Thursday. Mexico’s accumulated tallies are currently just under 3.84 million and 290,630, respectively. Estimated active cases number 22,301.

• Just 17% of general care beds set aside for coronavirus patients across Mexico are occupied, and 15% of those with ventilators are in use, the Health Ministry said Thursday. More than 129.2 million vaccine doses have been administered, with more than 75 million Mexicans fully vaccinated and an additional 12.4 million partially vaccinated.

The government said two weeks ago that all adults had been offered at least one shot, and that the vaccination rate among those aged 18 and over was 83%.

With reports from Milenio and El Universal