Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) have been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus with 1,245 confirmed cases between the two.

The state oil company reported 1,092 cases and 141 deaths as of Sunday, which corresponds to an average rate of infection of 20.7 per day and 2.5 daily deaths.

Of those infected, 146 are currently hospitalized and 31 patients are in intensive care.

Pemex, which employs 127,000 workers, reported its first infected employee on March 23, a 52-year-old union worker who earlier that month had taken a trip to Europe accompanied by his wife, daughter and 18-month-old granddaughter. 

As of last week, more Pemex workers had died of coronavirus than nurses despite the fact that the oil company has 30% fewer employees than the number of nurses in Mexico.

Pemex has drawn fire for being slow to enact sanitary measures to prevent the spread of the virus. It only began evacuating workers from offshore platforms at the end of April. The company operates 24 hospitals to care for its employees.

“Pemex continues to implement a comprehensive prevention model to minimize the spread of Covid-19 among our workers, retirees and their families,” the company said in a statement last week. “Healthy distance measures continue to be intensified, as does work at home for administrative activities and vulnerable personnel, sanitary filters, cleaning and sanitation in work centers and distancing of operational personnel.”

The CFE, with some 90,000 employees, has seen 152 cases as of its last report on May 12.

Source: El Universal (sp), Bloomberg (en)